The New Pope finally meets The Young Pope in a satiating, beatific finale

Photograph: Gianni Fiorito (HBO)

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The opening titles of this episode give us the showdown we’d been anticipating because the announcement that Jude Legislation can be on this season: They pit the 2 popes in opposition to one another. We minimize backwards and forwards between Brannox, strolling in gradual movement via the Vatican in a aware echo of the primary episode of The Younger Pope, and Lenny, strolling via his religious seashore dreamscape as he returns to the world of the dwelling. It’s a neat concept, particularly since, as we understand, the sequence is edited to make it appear as if the 2 males are strolling towards one another. Sparks are about to fly! Proper?

Not a lot. This remaining episode of The New Pope is nice, and never simply because it comprises one thing like a 3rd of the season’s plot. It bounces between tones, settings, and concepts, transferring a confidence the remainder of the season has appeared to lack. That’s, in the end, largely due to the chaos spark that’s Pius XIII. When Lenny and Brannox lastly meet, it’s not even a contest—Brannox makes an attempt to increase his ring in order that the emeritus pope would possibly kiss it, however Lenny (clad in a traditional priest’s outfit) ignores him completely, and takes management of the room. It’s by design that this occurs, since Brannox’s insecurities are such that he ought to shrink away from a dwelling saint. Nevertheless it nonetheless doesn’t fairly make up for the power imbalance: Lenny is the one one within the opening titles who winks on the digicam. Brannox is a person, however Lenny is one thing extra.

John Paul III does, admittedly, get an enormous increase out of being the relatable, fallible, human pope. The opening titles are a fake-out: He’s heading to ship an deal with, fairly than confront Lenny. The photographs Sofia leaked have earned him an enormous following, together with a gaggle of punks who’re seemingly religious Catholics now as a result of the pope had piercings within the ’80s. Within the speech, he speaks on behalf of people that have been marginalized, bullied, oppressed. He’s channeling his anger towards his mother and father, and it exhibits. That is essentially the most fireplace Malkovich has proven since all the best way again in episode three, and it’s really welcome to see right here. When Brannox tells the group “We will now not be forgotten,” he’s figuring out himself with the thousands and thousands listening to his speech, with the widespread mass of humanity. And his story concludes accordingly—fairly than Lenny’s dramatic removing from the world, Brannox will get to dwell as part of it.

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The Younger Pope was much less a season of tv than a fever dream, a weird exploration of the establishment of the church, the personage of Lenny Belardo, and the character of religion writ massive. The New Pope is, for higher and for worse, a season of tv. A number of plot threads are deliberately wrapped up on this episode. Faisal is launched from jail, and reunited with Sister Caterina. Bauer will get despatched to his subsequent posting in Korea, and appears ready to marry his paid companion-slash-girlfriend. None of this could have occurred in The Younger Pope, just because it didn’t care about closure. The season even has a cheerful ending for The New Pope, within the type of a laicized John Brannox really incomes the love of his mother and father—and winding up with a newly single Sofia Dubois, who has despatched her ex-husband, Spalletta, and Guicciardini, the Italian finance minister, to jail.

When Sofia tells Voiello that she plans to resign from the Vatican, he responds with a way of grim acceptance: “In the end you all fall in love.” It’s a sentiment that helps floor Voiello, since he does his finest to keep away from attachments that would stop him from doing his job. However—and I say this as one of many world’s greatest Voiello followers—it highlights one of many greatest holes in The New Pope. There’s no indication right here that Voiello remains to be struggling the sting of heartbreak from his failed romance with Sister Mary, and even excited about it when he discusses love with Sofia. I don’t assume The New Pope wanted to explicitly reference her, however I don’t assume Silvio Orlando is speaking that as a part of what’s motivating Voiello right here, a uncommon skinny second in his characterization of the grasp manipulator.

Nonetheless, this episode is, total, a unbelievable showcase for Voiello—and for all that I’m blended on sure elements of this episode, I’m excited about these faults exactly as a result of the remainder of it’s so good. Placing apart the ending, during which Voiello lastly does accomplishment his dream and turn into the actual new pope (with a unbelievable help from the ever-creepy Don Cavallo), there’s additionally Voiello’s return to being traditional comedian reduction. Confronted with a disaster, Lenny’s first intuition is to foment revolution, dangling the prospect of an outright holy struggle motivated by his resurrection. And Voiello is the one who takes the brunt of that plan, in some ways: “Take notes, Voiello,” Lenny says, discussing the speech John Paul III must give in response. “I’ve to dictate what he’ll say.”

In truth, it seems like The New Pope labored backward from this ending, during which the church has to come back collectively to take care of the disaster: a hostage scenario, during which the caliphate seemingly takes a number of kids, together with the priest serving as their trainer, hostage on the small Italian island of Ventotene—a scenario we find out about in a prolonged shot of Voiello delivering exposition to Girolamo’s grave. The hostage scenario fully diverts any potential crucifix-measuring battle the 2 popes may need had, as a substitute subsuming it right into a strain cooker scenario.

This obvious battle—between the Islamic fundamentalists and the supposed Catholic average, between Lenny and Brannox, between prayer and motion—turns into a synecdoche for the broader themes which have animated the remainder of the season. If I needed to distill these themes down, I’d say they congeal right into a lesson roughly alongside these traces: fundamentalism emerges from doubt and insecurity, motivating each the caliphate and, extra importantly, the Lenny cult. With the ability to dwell in that doubt and thriller, and proceed to dwell anyway, is a advantage. Actually, it’s what Lenny preaches throughout his remaining speech to the devoted, during which he raises, then promptly dismisses, the questions surrounding his personal existence. He asks the group in St. Peter’s Sq., and us the viewers, to let the thriller be. That thriller is the thing of worship for the church, and, in a way, for us.

I suppose The New Pope has to embrace one of these ambiguity in some methods. However isn’t it extra enjoyable when the characters have to answer certainty? After chastising Lenny successfully (as a result of the abductors have murdered the priest), Brannox primarily bails on Rome, leaving Lenny to turn into the one and solely pope once more. Finally, Lenny takes the one, decisive motion of his second papacy: He exhibits up on the island, and his presence will get the terrorists to face down and reveal themselves because the Lenny cult, pretending to be Islamic terrorists with the intention to draw Lenny out of hiding. I’ve blended emotions about this growth—I’m delighted that the season did not boil right down to “scary Muslim terrorists,” which might have been fairly tough, and it’s genuinely fascinating to see The New Pope pull off a kind of twist. And although it could have been good to have some payoff to Esther’s religious vacancy, there’s one thing trustworthy and tragic in her not getting that closure. The forever-unnamed chief of the cult compares Lenny’s physique to a “physique of Christ,” one thing she’s continuously searching for however can by no means fairly get, an intangible problem to religion that mirrors Esther’s season-long darkish night time of the soul. Is their glimpse of Lenny sufficient? The place do they go from right here? We’ll seemingly by no means discover out.

Sorrentino isn’t obligated to provide solutions to any of the questions he’s raised, however he is nice at offering them. Examine the complete Ventotene scene to the finale’s spotlight, a fully masterful sequence during which Lenny brings the cardinals to heel. It’s not the place he finally ends up by the conclusion of the episode, and it’s a bit odd to see Pius XIII undergo his total Younger Pope arc in half an hour or so, nevertheless it’s nonetheless a pleasure to look at carried in on his palanquin as he was within the fifth (and finest) episode of The Younger Pope. On this speech, Lenny makes use of his full saintliness, asserting that the actual fact his return calls for fealty from the opposite cardinals. What would you do when you had been of their place? We’re merely watching Lenny crush everybody, as much as and together with the present pontiff—and it scratched an itch I’d forgotten I had.

This finale offers at the least some solutions. Lenny confirms he was current when Brannox stood at Adam’s grave, which appears to show past a shadow of a doubt, once more, that Lenny’s religious appearances weren’t merely metaphorical. “Did you assume you had been alone?” (Alternatively, his preliminary response to the kidnapping is to imagine it was the caliphate, and to double down on this perception as soon as an emissary of the caliph tells Voiello in person who they weren’t accountable.) He seems to verify, in his remaining speech, the fundamental decency of the Center Method, which Brannox has succeeding in preaching to the church even when it was by no means his doctrine to start with. Having carried out that, he can, as he places it, “return to [him]self,” and provides in to his want to make a life with Sofia. All is calm on this planet.

One factor, nevertheless, isn’t a thriller: Finally, Lenny goes again into the ocean, returning to the ocean from which he got here. In a startling sequence, he fulfills the promise he made again in Venice and embraces everybody within the crowd, exhibiting a stage of fundamental human connection which may have been unthinkable even a couple of minutes earlier within the episode. And, trying up into the celebrities at God’s home (certainly one of many, many extra callbacks to the primary episodes of The Younger Pope), the whole lot goes quiet. Lenny dies for actual. It’s an evocative, calm, poignant depiction of getting fulfilled his goal, and a stunning stage of closure to his story. I’m glad we bought that, even when I didn’t count on it. And actually, in spite of everything this time, I’m glad the church bought the pope it actually deserved all alongside: Voiello, who we go away preventing with Esther’s son Pius. Are all Pius’ a ache within the ass on this world? Possibly, however we love all of them the identical

Stray observations:

• Brannox tells Gutierrez: “After I need, Gutierrez, I understand how to take the stage.” I ponder what he was ready for?
• “A good suggestion is one which minimizes damages and maximizes earnings. Exterior of right here they name it capitalism.” Gutierrez, no! Or possibly, sure? (Capitalism is unhealthy.)
• Lenny says that the guts is “an organ that beats,” which is an unimaginable jumping-off level for a dance album.
• “I don’t perceive. Who’s the pope now?” I’m so glad Aguirre bought another likelihood to make me chuckle.
• Thanks for hanging out! I believe this season is fairly clearly a contact much less magical than The Younger Pope, nevertheless it’s nonetheless so, so a lot better than nearly the rest on TV, and it’s miraculous that it exists in any respect. See you all once we return in 2023 for The Recent Pope.