The last 30 seconds of the finale unfurls a cheap “and there’s more” banner, ruining the balance of the otherwise effective closing scene.Spoilers ahead for “Wedding of the Season,” the season finale of The Buccaneers.
Apple TV+’s The Buccaneers is a series that runs on the twin engines of literary adaptation and coming-of-age soap. The obvious comparison points for this sexy historical drama are either Dickinson or Bridgerton, both of them different approaches to blending a historical setting with a modern sensibility. Neither of those is quite right, though. Dickinson has more of a poisoned-internet brain and a greater sense of daring in its combination of historical foundation and contemporary reference. Bridgerton is sweeter and more superficial, with a rinky-dink approach to world-building that places the show’s emphasis squarely on its central romances. What makes The Buccaneers tick, instead, is its combination of a Masterpiece Theater–inflected Edith Wharton setting (ballrooms, private bedrooms, whispered tête-à-têtes in a garden bower) with a core cast of characters straight out of Younger, or The Bold Type, or even early seasons of Sex and the City. It’s a TV show about modern young women just trying to make it in the world, which is a genre that lives just a step or two beyond most YA premises. The delight of The Buccaneers stems from all of that being embedded in a Wharton-themed world of snobbery, ambition, social missteps, and regret.
When those two engines pulled together this season, The Buccaneers was pitch-perfect melodrama. Conchita (Alisha Boe) becomes a mother long before she’s ready, but the story swerves around dour parenthood-resentment plotlines, and instead becomes about her frustration with her in-laws’ unwillingness to accept her wild American ways. (Generally this means that she wants to make out with her husband in public spaces. Her husband, meanwhile, can’t quite escape his longstanding sexual relationship with his childhood nanny.) Jinny St. George (Imogen Waterhouse) has reached for the fanciest and most advantageous marriage she can possibly attain, then discovers that her new husband, Lord Seadown (Barney Fishwick), is an abusive asshole who’s likely to kill her unless she dies in childbirth first. Honoria (Mia Threapleton) and Mabel (Josie Totah) realize they’re very into each other and curse the benighted social context that won’t let them kiss. Kristine Froseth, who’s really excellent as Nan St. George, gets to ride a horse along a windswept coastline while Brandi Carlile’s “Broken Horses” plays in the background!
It’s solid stuff, swinging freely between distinctly contemporary character development (lesbians, yes, but also a general sense of proto-feminist outrage at their inability to escape the shackles of patriarchy) and something closer to a classic Wharton novel’s focus on class, ambition, and despair. Structurally, it toys with both sides of its dual background. Its big cliffhanger beats and melodramatic reveals push it more in the mode of The Bold Type, and the inclusion of Conchita’s story, which extends beyond her marriage, suggests that The Buccaneers isn’t tied to a simple marriage-story arc. The possibility of following these characters even after they’re married leaves room to imagine a Buccaneers that’s shaped more like a soap, but it’s still working well within the limits of a 19th-century novel’s many surprises and developing plots — and could easily have been all wrapped up within a single season.
And then — and then — the last 30 seconds of the last episode hit, and The Buccaneers chooses (narrative) violence.
The set-up is this: Jinny has finally admitted to her sister Nan that Jinny’s marriage is a nightmarish hellhole of physical and emotional abuse. Not only that, Jinny is now pregnant and she’s afraid for her child. At the same time, Nan is caught between two men: Theo, the Duke of Tintagel (Guy Remmers), who Nan once kind of loved and has agreed to marry, and Theo’s best friend, Guy Thwarte (Matthew Broome). (Yes, it is a little confusing that the duke has the same name as the actor who plays the duke’s rival, and that name is a general term for “that man.”) Nan and Guy Thwarte love one another, but she’s promised to marry Theo, who at first desperately loved Nan and now seems to be mostly driven by his possessiveness of her. On top of all of that, Nan’s marriage prospects almost collapsed entirely when they all learned she is the product of an illegitimate relationship, because her father’s kind of a jerk.
When the final scene of the last episode begins, Nan has made the decision to go through with her marriage to Theo. It’s a glorious sweep of mixed emotions: Nan has sacrificed her own happiness for her sister’s happiness, knowing that as Duchess, she can better protect Jinny from her dastardly husband. But it’s more than just that. As Nan walks up the aisle, the scene cuts back to Jinny, escaping in a carriage under the care of Guy Thwarte, who has given up his own potential love match in order to save Jinny. It’s majestic! It’s sad! It’s very terrible, and it’s also perfectly good enough jumping-off point for a second season of this show. It has the exact right combination of Wharton (desperate sadness, consequence of one’s actions, mixture of accomplishment and defeat) and a show that could be on Freeform (unresolved romantic tension, sisters saving each other, parents looking on as adult children make choices). This would all be fine. If it had to be a show that makes a bid for multiple seasons rather than wrapping up everything in a nice one-season package, this was a reasonable way to do it.
But The Buccaneers can’t leave well enough alone. Instead, Jinny and Nan’s mother (played by Christina Hendricks) comes running out of the church. Not long after, the furious Lord Seadown goes sprinting out in search of Jinny. Then there’s Colonel St. George, running up to the church to meet his wife. (Why! Where was he? Why was he not inside witnessing his daughter’s wedding?) “She’s here!” he gasps, out of breath. “She’s inside, Patti, right now. She’s inside the castle.” “Who?” Mrs. St. George asks. “The mother. Nan’s … mother.”
This is just flagrant! The identity of Nan’s birth mother has had no bearing on this season, beyond its very brief introduction as a piece of information the viewers don’t have. Nan’s illegitimacy has been significant, but The Buccaneers has declined to give Nan or the viewers any sense of what it would mean to know her mother. Dangling it over the ending of this season is a promise of something notable to come without having done any of the build-up necessary to support that promise. It also ruins the balance of the otherwise effective closing scene. There’s a looming cloud over Nan and Theo, a desperate and furious relief granted to Guy and Jinny — and then a cheap, glittery “and there’s more!” banner gets unfurled over the closing moments.
Thirty seconds earlier, and the ending would’ve been fine. An even better ending would’ve landed 30 seconds after Mr. St. George’s declaration, revealing the identity of Nan’s mother and the subsequent falling anvil of whatever the ramifications may be. It would’ve first proven that Nan’s mother’s identity actually was a meaningful discovery, and second, it would’ve left viewers with the part of a melodrama everyone actually longs for. The secret itself is never the most exciting thing in a story like this; the real juice is what happens when that secret is discovered. Imagine how much more thrilling it could’ve been to know whoever this hidden mother is, and to then be made to wait for all of that information to come spilling out in a yet-to-be-confirmed season two!
Instead, we have a sour closing note on an otherwise enjoyable season, and not even the closing needle drop (Taylor Swift’s “Long Live”) can turn it back into the pleasant sisterhood-and-sexy times historical drama it managed to pull off for so much of this season. It’s frustrating! It’s a cheap move for a show that has otherwise managed to keep its feet firmly in the territory of “fun and messy,” and it creates the possibility that there’ll be no second season and everyone has to live with this oddly desperate cliffhanger forever. We can hope that won’t happen, and The Buccaneers will return to at least attempt to resolve this flagrant, under-developed twist. Regardless, the last 30 seconds of this season will remain as a brief, obnoxious monument to what can happen when serial fiction emphasizes the mess rather than the characters: satisfaction has been denied, and not in a fun way.
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