Amazon’s Undone season 2 ending, defined

Undone was made for me. Set in San Antonio, Texas, the collection focuses on Alma, a Mexican American lady whose life is turned the wrong way up, sideways, and inside out after an accident causes her to awaken with time-altering powers. It’s latinidad and science fiction, however extra importantly, the collection has maintained a pointy have a look at psychological sickness, trauma, and grief.

For individuals who have lived it (or some model of it), Alma’s life is extraordinarily acquainted. She was raised by a Mexican mom and white father, the previous all the time targeted on ensuring her daughters slot in. This implies Alma and her sister, Becca, don’t converse Spanish, and their mother, Camila, is extraordinarily fast to emphasize that their ancestors have been Spaniards, not Nahua. Past that, Alma is pushed to get a cochlear implant and put right into a listening to college, ripped from her Deaf college and neighborhood in favor of being “regular.”

On the opposite facet of life steered towards assimilation, I can see myself in Alma. My mother actively saved me from talking Spanish, selected the “whitest”-sounding identify she might consider, and taught me to cover my incapacity and psychological well being points from these round me. It was for survival that I needed to bury elements of my tradition and myself, arising with excuses to only be me. That is the core of Undone season 1, however that’s not the place the story ends. As an alternative of selecting to only reject assimilation, the collection appears at the way to heal from it in season 2.

[Ed. note: This post goes into full detail about the end of Undone season 2.]

Alma sitting at the mouth of a cave, which we are looking out from

At first, Alma was in ache, ripped aside by grief and dancing on the razor’s fringe of manic episodes, petrified of seeing her psychological sickness for what it’s. Her father saves her — he exhibits her that her psychological sickness isn’t a curse, however a superpower, and Alma begins to develop into it. As a lot as her time journey is about saving her father’s life, it’s additionally about fixing the whole lot she regrets. Alma confronts the whole lot she dislikes about herself and makes it her mission to undo it. And when she will be able to’t erase it completely, she undoes sufficient to not less than make all her ache price it.

Undone’s science fiction parts and time journey current themselves as a chance, however one thing which may be extra imaginative than actuality. The present continuously toys with the concept that it’s all in Alma’s head, a alternative that extends all the way in which to the rotoscope animation model. When season 1 ends, Alma is sitting alone in entrance of a cave ready for her useless dad to return out and show to her that she does have energy, that she will be able to change the ugly in her life and undo all the ache that lies in it.

When Undone season 2 kicks off, it appears like a completely completely different present. Alma goes by the cave and realizes that she mounted all of it. She undid her father’s loss of life and within the course of created a brand new timeline. Nevertheless, regardless of how idyllic this new actuality is, it comes with its personal ache. Solely now, the aim of the collection has morphed. It’s not about escaping and undoing the previous, however reconciling it.

To do this, season 2 unpacks the guilt carried by the collection’ moms: Camila and Geraldine, Alma’s paternal grandmother. Each girls felt compelled to vary who they’re, to outright reject parts of their lives that related them to their pasts. And their trauma ripples by Alma’s life in methods she will be able to’t stand, propelling her to attempt to repair all of it.

For Camila, she left a toddler she had out of wedlock in an orphanage in Mexico. Struck by the grief of giving him up however saddled with the concern of dropping her present household in the USA, she selected to cover him, sending him a motherly card on holidays and cash each every so often. She successfully buried that a part of herself, hiding it from everybody within the hope of dwelling her American life and fulfilling all expectations.

Camila’s face reflected in a piece of shattered glass on the ground. The glass shard is surrounded by other pieces and has someone’s feet standing on them

Alma standing behind her grandmother Geraldine, who’s playing piano

That alternative is strongly influenced by her mother-in-law, Geraldine. After fleeing World Warfare II-era Poland, Geraldine locked away who she was earlier than she obtained off the boat. Because the final surviving member of her household and having erased who she was earlier than, Geraldine is fast to inform Camila to depart her baby behind. And whereas initially, it appears like Geraldine is being overprotective of her son by telling Camila to neglect her baby in Mexico, in fact, she doesn’t understand how else to dwell. Geraldine doesn’t know the way to embrace the previous or the damage that comes with it. As an alternative, she is aware of that assimilating and pretending it doesn’t exist means survival.

The previous couple of episodes of Undone season 2 dive deep into Geraldine’s unconscious, making an attempt to free her youthful self from behind a closed door. Each time Alma and her household get near having grownup Geraldine together with her childhood self, they’re turned away. Time and time once more, Geraldine rejects her previous and rejects her Jewish identification and identify within the course of.

Geraldine’s story and the way in which it trickles by her household is one which many marginalized individuals know — that of locking away your previous life to embrace a brand new one out of what appears like necessity. Many households modified, anglicized, or Americanized their final names with a purpose to present each alternative they may. And in some instances, like Geraldine’s, the previous isn’t thought-about a household legacy to protect however one thing to throw away, leaving many with extra questions than solutions about the place they slot in.

But when Undone season 1 taught us something, it’s that Alma is an unstoppable power. And her want to remedy her household’s ills brings the season dwelling by therapeutic everybody. Camila accepts her son into her life, and he joins the household as a beloved brother and a son. Geraldine by no means rejects her identification and teaches her household about her previous. The season’s blissful ending comes from the acceptance each girls give themselves. Alma has undone the ache by serving to every member of her household settle for who they’re.

undone animation gets surreal as rosa salazar floats through blue nothingness

alma, jacob, and becca as the world crumbles around them

That therapeutic and acceptance is one thing that Alma additionally chooses for herself. When confronted with remaining in her hard-won timeline of a loving household the place the guilt and ache has been undone, for probably the most half, or returning to her personal, she makes a alternative.

As she’s discovered, even with time-travel superpowers, the power to undo dangerous selections and make good ones doesn’t cease the whole lot. It doesn’t cease Alma’s father from finally dying. It doesn’t make perfection, however it does educate Alma that therapeutic doesn’t imply not struggling. It’s about accepting each a part of your self, the errors and the ache and the happiness too.

Whether or not you see season 2 as a affirmation of Alma’s powers, or when you’re like me and see it because the proof that she doesn’t have them, the ending is identical: acceptance. Her alternative is to return to the timeline the place she is the quintessential fuck-up who fights together with her mom and sister. The timeline the place she’s jobless and an underachiever, the place she hates herself — and most significantly, the place she is mentally in poor health.

However by serving to her mom and her grandmother settle for their guilt and their grief, Alma can lastly have a look at hers instantly. There’s a calm within the season’s ultimate moments, a quiet acceptance of the ache and the issues that the whole collection has labored towards. Whereas Alma’s story is filled with specificities about her heritage or her deafness, Undone finally reaches past that with common parts that talk to all of us who wished we might simply hit rewind on our selections. Undone offered itself as time-traveling science fiction, however the therapeutic it teaches transcends that. We’re not who we’re due to our triumphs or our pleasure alone. We’re solid within the fireplace that breaks us every now and then and rebuilt stronger than the final. We’re as a lot our struggles as we’re our wins, and that deserves love too.

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