Trailer for The Americans’ final season reminds us that “it doesn’t always end well”
The Americans is a trap that’s been springing for five seasons on FX, the fixed outcome of its underlying historical conflict suggesting a few potential outcomes: Soviet sleeper agents Philip and Elizabeth Jennings and their family either make it out alive, get caught, sustain major casualties, or inflict major casualties upon neighborhood G-man Stan Beeman. Then again, The Americans has also proven to be one of the most unpredictable shows on the air in recent years, so maybe none of that happens and everything works out just hunky dory and the whole gang winds up adopting new lives as, just spitballing here, lumberjacks.
Whatever happens, you can get your first good look at it in the trailer above, in which young Paige Jennings follows in her mother’s bone-crushing footsteps, the erstwhile Max Medina shows up as part of a State Department delegation negotiating with the Soviet Union, and there’s nary a Mail Robot to be seen or Fleetwood Mac cut to be heard. And if we reach the end of The Americans without appearances from either of those two lynchpins then, well, that’ll be the true tragic ending.