How are we still processing The Curse finale?
Season one of the Showtime satire ended more than two weeks ago, but we've yet to come to terms with its nightmarish, surreal sendoff
The Curse is gone; long live The Curse. And thanks to the series’ unforgettable ending, it probably will—at least in our minds. As a goodbye present, Showtime’s drama delivered 2024’s first truly petrifying episode of TV with its season-one finale, which dropped on January 14. “Green Queen” leaves a haunting memory in its wake as a WTF-inducing hour of television, which is simultaneously delirious, shocking, and darkly comical. How often do you look at the screen and go, “He what? He clung to a tree branch that was chopped off, thus ejecting him into the goddamn orbit?” How are we expected to process that? It’s exactly the kind of episode that takes up space in your brain long after it’s over. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
The first big moment during the finale that made us do a double-take came halfway through the hour. A pregnant Whitney (Emma Stone) wakes up one morning to see her husband, Asher (Nathan Fielder), floating overhead. He’s fast asleep but not next to her in bed. Instead, he’s on the ceiling. The camera slowly, deliberately tilts to him for the reveal. It’s so abrupt and creepy that we had no choice but to rewind and rewatch it twice to ensure we didn’t miss a pivotal explanation for Asher’s ascension. And then we kept watching, realizing with a gnawing sense of horror with each passing minute, asking ourselves if, holy hell, the curse might actually be real.
For its entire first season, the show has been building up to this moment. Yet no amount of cringe or shock value could’ve prepared us for The Curse’s abstract unfolding in its last 30 minutes. Series co-creators and co-stars Benny Safdie and Fielder have aimed for a trippy narrative here—and a divisive one. They likely knew going in that “Green Queen” wouldn’t—and probably didn’t—land well for everyone. It’s too bizarre, with subplots left untied. But it turns out that satirizing white liberalism is a good springboard to (insanely) tackle a surprisingly touching theme.
See, The Curse is a nightmare-inducing examination of commitment—to a person, a career, and even your own belief of who you are. It unpacks the mental toll of what staunch devotion does to you. Whitney knows in her heart she isn’t the giving person she pretends to be, no matter how hard she tries. Her commitment to this notion leads to plenty of selfish behavior. She’s committed to staying with a spouse she despises to feel better about herself, among other reasons. And poor Asher. He’s equally committed to his marriage, unsure of what life without it will be.
Dougie and Flipanthropy become a bizarre conduit for them to revisit this commitment—as does Nala (Hikmah Warsame) when she “curses” Asher for taking the $100 back. But self-reflection and letting go isn’t easy, and neither is fear of the known. So the couple, despite the fights and taunts, doesn’t bother. The Curse then forces them to let go in a sick Lynchian way.
Look no further than the photo above to grasp the jaw-dropping way in which it’s achieved. Were you also screaming and manically pacing here? Whitney and Asher aren’t suddenly yoga experts or performing a bizarre dance. She’s trying her mightiest to pull her husband down but can’t. “Green Queen” picks up on its intensity as soon as we, along with the couple, realize he’s not coming down. The curse—a.k.a. his fears—has manifested in the worst possible way. And it has nothing to do with the passive home’s air pressure.
The subsequent events are wild. Asher is unable to get back on the ground despite his spider-like movements. Whitney shuffles around the house with dread, eventually leaving when she goes into labor. Even then, her call to the doula focuses on her needs and not trying to save her husband. In one sense, it’s a pathologically detailed character study. In another, it’s an ominous thriller. When Asher escapes the roof, he flies onto the tree, inviting neighbors to marvel at the lengths he goes to film an HGTV show. Who’d think any of this is real? No one, not even Dougie, believes his pleas. We were agape when the chainsaw arrived to chop off the branch he was clinging to. For the first time since pressing play on the episode, we knew what was coming next: Asher was going to get sucked into space and die.
It was shocking, sure, but The Curse was never going to go out without pain. Watching it has been a sweet agony from the beginning. Why would the end be different? So Asher is thrust into the cosmos by forces beyond his control, and he’s curled up like a baby while it’s happening. At the same time, his wife is giving birth to his son. Is the cycle of commitment repeating itself? Will Whitney pass on the anxiety she gave Asher to her newborn now? Does the so-called curse apply to their spawn? And what’s the fine line between fantasy and verity?
“Green Queen” leaves us with a ton of questions. After distancing from the episode for more than two weeks, we can think about what it means instead of simply freaking out and frantically texting, “jfc has anyone seen The Curse finale yet?” One friend replied to this query, succinctly, “so scary.” And you know what? Commitment is scary. And gravity shouldn’t have to reverse on you and spit you into space just to teach you a lesson about letting go. But it’s incredibly thrilling to watch when it does.