Ok, so a love story Vladimir is not. That much has become clear! If, like us, you’ve already binged your way through all eight episodes of Netflix’s daring, psychosexual academic thriller, you probably have a few questions. Namely, what was going on with that ending?
If, like Rachel Weisz’s unnamed protagonist, you spent most of the series lusting after Leo Woodhall’s smirking Vladimir and his dainty little chain necklace, you may have expected the show to end with — you know, some very satisfying sexy times in the cabin.
Things didn’t exactly go that way, did they? And perhaps that’s kind of the point. After all, this show, and Julia May Jonas’ book upon which it is based, is all about dark, unrequited desires and power dynamics as told by an unreliable narrator who largely lives inside her own imaginative head. It has a lot more in common with the Gothic romantic literature like Jane Eyre than a fun, sexy TV romp like Rivals.
Indeed, the show is filled with literary references to novels about dangerous obsessions that can help us understand the show’s ending. There’s Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, which Weisz’s character teaches to her students, about another unnamed narrator who develops an all-consuming obsession with her mysterious older husband’s dead wife, Rebecca. There’s also the aforementioned Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, another story about a mousy protagonist whose relationship with gruff older Mr. Rochester is literally haunted by (spoiler) his ‘mad’ secret wife who he keeps in the attic. And then there’s Vladimir (yes, Vladimir) Nabokov’s Lolita, which sees an unnamed narrator lusting after a child. But more on all of this later.
First of all, what happened in that Vladimir finale? And what does it mean?
A trip to the cabin
After months of sexual fantasising about Vlad, Weisz’s character finally takes some action. She invites Vlad for lunch and ends up convincing him to come with her to her secluded cabin in the woods. For an afternoon writing retreat, she says. Sure. While we might have all hoped this would go the Heated Rivalry cottage route, it quickly became a lot more Cabin in the Woods.
Before long, the protagonist has slipped a little muscle relaxer into Vlad’s whisky. When the half-conscious Vlad tries to stumble away, our protagonist takes her chance and chains him up to an old wooden chair, before calmly returning to her manuscript — which, by the way, is basically fan fiction of her Vlad-inspired fantasies.
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A happy ending?
But it’s twist upon twist in Vladimir, and when Vlad comes to, he confesses that, actually, he’s not not into this whole getting-chained-up thing. In fact, his manuscript is also about his fantasies — in this case, fantasies about a young man who has a meaningful, intellectual, tender affair with his older mentor. How sweet.