"Taboo" Season Finale Recap

Sorry for the lack of a Taboo recap last week. It was my exam week and I had no time to carve out three hours to watch the show and write a recap because, ironically, the exam was on the class that I write the recap during, so I had to lock myself in a room and memorize lecture slides for two days. Here’s the finale recap:

For a show that entertained more than dazzled and made us gasp instead of making us think, Taboo had a perfectly satisfying finale. Let me be clear, I’m not putting the show down by giving it that description. I’ve just noticed the critical disappointment of the show that hasn’t matched up to the fans who actually watch it. I think, like I said two weeks ago, that a lot of people were hoping for Taboo to be this great artistic achievement instead of a badass, extremely well-acted and well-produced entertaining hour of our week. It was the latter. I think there’s nothing wrong with that and know the vast majority of fans feel the same way I do. And for what this show was, which is perfectly OK, it was a fantastic finale.

Not going outside-the-box too much, Taboo decided to neatly tie up all it’s storylines, kill off the loose ends and give a satisfying clean break to the current plot. Most notably was the death of the head of the East India Company, Stuart Strange. Like all genius villains, it was ultimately arrogance that killed Stuart Strange. For the first time he took Delaney fully seriously and saw him as an equal sitting across from him in that jail cell, and even recognized there might be some things he knows that Strange doesn’t, he was able to negotiate and work out a deal. Which he should have been doing all along. If he took Delaney more seriously, he wouldn’t have been in this insane mess to start. He wouldn’t have spent the last few months of his sanity constantly fraying by being pulled into the world of James Delaney. When he finally realized everything James was capable of, it looked like Strange might be able to get at least a version of what he wants. Unfortunately he still thought he was one step ahead. He thought that he was jussssst that much smarter and more cunning than everyone else. And just like happened in Game of Thrones, it ended up with him being blown up in his own castle after thinking he had just played the ultimate trump card. You’d think he would’ve learned.

Strange wasn’t the only person to try to outwit Delaney. The American spy Dumbarton, aka 1800’s Doug Stamper, was found to be in the East India’s pocket the entire time in what I thought was the most surprising and best presented reveal of the season. It turns out that literally everyone was in the East India’s pocket: the lawyer, the Crown, the Americans, everyone. Everyone that is, except James Delaney and his crew. And that’s what made James so dangerous. Because he’s someone who no one can understand. He is so outside the established London paradigm, none of his adversaries can figure out how to deal with him. And almost all of their enemies paid for that misunderstanding with their lives.

But that price wasn’t just paid by enemies. Being inside the world of James Delaney takes a toll on your life and sanity, including friends. Brace is now broken and abandoned in London. Godfrey lost everything except his identity. Atticus has lost an eye. The Chemist is burned and charred. Winter is dead. Zilpha is at the bottom of a river. And so on and so forth. You simply don’t cozy up to someone like James and make it out physically and psychologically unscathed. For most of time we’ve known James, this corrosive and destructive effect he has on others leaves him, for the most part, unbothered.

But with one huge exception. Seeing Delaney cry after Zilpha’s suicide wasn’t the first flash of emotional vulnerability before, we’ve seen it mostly related to Winter and his mother. But this was different. Before all the tender moments from Delaney were framed in anger or apathy. This was genuine sadness and regret. Seeing Delaney cry almost seemed unthinkable. It was a painfully human moment from someone who, both in an ephemeral and animalistic sense, always seemed to be….something else. That emotional vulnerability was, even more than the awesome shootouts and explosions, the most interesting part of this finale. Despite his stated commitment to nihilism, Delaney’s genuine care for Zilpha and Winter show he does believe in something. And delivering justice to the Sons of Africa lawyer Chichester when he’d already had bounced and blown Strange into ground beef proves that, no matter what he says, he does believe in something. He does believe in someone sense of justice. Which means he does believe in some sense of good.

I don’t know what the future of Taboo is. I don’t know what the future of Taboo is because Tom Hardy doesn’t know what the future of Taboo is. He said in a recent interview he’s confident it will come back in some form, but as of right now the show hasn’t been officially renewed by BBC or FX. As soon as he texts me what he knows, I’ll tell you.  I genuinely hope it comes back. Right now we have James and his entire suicide squad of society-rejected killers headed to Portugal and then the good ol’ US of A with a storage hold full of gunpowder. For me and every other fan of the show’s sake, I want to see which explosion is next.

I’m on Twitter @CharlieWisco