Summary
A weak ending that lacks both closure and catharsis, Little Birds episode 6 caps off a poor season with the idea that the real story will need another season to be told. Good look making that case.
This recap of Little Birds season 1, episode 6 contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.
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As it turns out, Lucy and Hugo make a decent pairing after all – at least when it comes to setting up Grant. Lucy preps Vaney for the patriarch’s arrival and he invites them to dinner; she returns to the bar and reminds Hugo and Bill of the stakes. We have a finale, folks.
Grant’s a detestable presence, foul and judgmental about everything. Hugo struggles around him, but by this point, the Englishman has come to terms with who he is, and later leaves determined to find Adham. His inability to do so pushes Hugo even further emotionally, knowing his own inability to accept himself and his nature pushed his lover away.
As the stakes continue to heighten in Little Birds episode 6, Lucy fits a recording device to her leg in order to capture damning evidence against her father while Vaney, at the farm, reveals to Cherifa, who he bundled in the back of his car, that he plans to quell the brewing Nationalist rebellion by blowing the King’s plane out of the sky.
Vaney offers Cherifa the chance to be his bride. He lets her get cleaned up and gives her a dress to wear, and she meets him upstairs, where he has her cook for him. She still has a gun on her, which forces some thinking on one’s feet, and eventually, Grant arrives to pitch an anti-air gun to an interested Vaney.
The extent to which this all goes wrong is quite impressive. Tensions constantly heighten. Things become more and more hostile. Everyone rubs everyone else the wrong way. Eventually, it all kicks off good and proper: Lucy shoots Corbeau, Cherifa kicks Vaney into the basement, where he’s bound, and Lucy shoots her own father. It’s carnage. In the aftermath of the violence, both women sit. They talk. Eventually, they go outside and blow the house to pieces using the anti-air gun. They walk away together, ending both Little Birds season 1, episode 6, and the series as a whole.
It’s difficult to argue that this is a worthwhile ending. It lacks closure on an awful lot of different character arcs and plot elements and failed to do anything with a wider cultural context that was supposedly integral to this story of colonialism. A cop-out, then, and while I suppose there’s scope for a sophomore outing, I’ll leave arguing that there’s justification for one to somebody else.
