Identity And The End Of 'The Americans'

This post gives away in great detail the events of the series finale of FX's The Americans. If you are reading it and you have not yet watched the finale, you are about to find out everything that happens. Are we clear? OK, then.

The Americans is the kind of show you should never have watched in the hopes that the ending would spring up like a jack-in-the-box, justifying six seasons of slow-burn spy drama and marital evolution with some grand finale that tied everything together. You should never have watched it expecting some explosive ending to come galloping out with 12 minutes to go, the way it would happen on a lot of shows.

Nevertheless, I really thought one of them was going to kill the other. I thought so for years.

But it didn't happen. They both lived. As did their kids. As did Stan. Literally no one died in the finale. No one. Would you have believed that the finale of The Americans wouldn't draw a drop of blood? That the Jenningses' final reckoning with everyone from their children to Stan to the rest of the FBI would occur without violence?

Let's step back.

Philip and Elizabeth Jennings (Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell) have killed a lot of people in their work as Russian spies posing as an American married couple. That has included some nasty characters, but a good many perfectly innocent ones, too. And that's on top of the many victims whose lives they have ruined (here, we pour one out for poor Martha). This is all