I think what made me love that had to do with the line preceding it - David says he won’t go until she tells him to. Katja: That’s why I loved when she says “go” in the third scenario, when she takes him home and sleeps with him. To put herself in the shoes of this person - this villain - and then empathize with him? That’s a wild exercise. Sangeeta: Coel’s decision to tell David’s side of the story in the second scenario - in a way that was almost redemptive - totally caught me off guard. Katja: The show really works to dismantle binary thinking in general - like survivor and perpetrator, gender binaries. Kerensa: The way all the characters have so many complexities that make them both good and bad. Katja: Everything about the show is so rigorous. Like, look how shitty this system is, do you see now? I May Destroy You really investigates how complicated assault and its fallout can be. Sangeeta: I agree - there’s an impulse to tell either a takedown narrative, or leave it ambiguous in a way that feels sort of lazy. The end of I May Destroy You feels better suited to questioning and imagining possibilities. Jordan Larson, essays editor: That was my hesitation with The Assistant, too – like what’s the point of realism here? What’s accomplished by trying to make this story of harassment and abuse as realistic as possible? It can be so limiting. Sangeeta: Yes, especially in post-Me Too entertainment. I’ve gotten so used to rape narratives having a “tidy” ending. The episode’s dream nature actually made it feel more realistic to me.
I MAY DESTROY YOU ENDING SERIES
Kerensa Cadenas, senior editor: I think it was bold of Coel to end the series like this. That seemed like an unfair ending for her. Sangeeta: I also didn’t like that Arabella would have to live with being a murderer. Katja: Yes! I was like, “This doesn’t quite track.” If it did end with her beating the shit out of him and possibly killing him, it would have felt wrong and abrupt, especially after she’d so carefully and thoroughly explored assault and then was just like: “And this is how it should go.” Sangeeta: Initially I found the first scenario, the revenge fantasy, very satisfying, but there was a sense of unease, especially from Terry. But even knowing that going in - something about the way the episode was filmed and the music just felt other-worldly.
But I did keep thinking maybe one of them would be the “real” one.ĭaise Bedolla, social media editor: The “twist” was spoiled for me in a headline I saw, unfortunately. Katja Vujić, associate Snapchat editor: I think even from the first scenario - when Arabella beats David, the rapist - there was a sense of unreality. Sangeeta Singh-Kurtz, senior writer: At what point did you realize that it was not reality? It’s a reality-bending conclusion, one that rejects any conception of a “satisfying” ending and instead asks, what if? There’s a bloody revenge fantasy an exercise in radical empathy, wherein her rapist is given space to tell his story and - possibly the most unnerving - a version in which they have consensual, tender sex.
Instead, we see Arabella enter her chilly backyard, before launching into three different scenarios in which she confronts her rapist. In the finale, she comes face to face with her rapist, but in keeping with the rigorous curiosity with which Coel approaches the topic of consent, there is no tidy, singular ending. The show’s heroine, Arabella (played by Coel), is drugged and sexually assaulted in episode one, and spends the bulk of the series unable to remember the details of the encounter until the penultimate episode. It concludes what is unequivocally the year’s most unsettling and compelling show, one that Coel has said took two-and-a-half years and 191 drafts to complete, and fictionalized her own experience of assault. The following contains spoilers for the finale episode of I May Destroy You.Īfter airing on BBC earlier this year, the finale of Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You premiered on HBO last night.
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