This article, “Who stole the Krugerrands” contains spoilers regarding Netflix’s Russian Doll season 2.
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Nadia finds herself transported back to the punk rock era of the eighties, which was handily the exact same time that the family’s fortune went missing. Our time travelling chain-smoker decides to use this new power as her way of rewriting history and reclaiming the stolen riches. But just who stole the Krugerrands in the first place and how will she get them back?
Russian Doll season 2 – who stole the Krugerrands?
The writers of Russian Doll decide to tilt full on into the most ironic of paradoxes and have Nadia involved in the actual robbery of the Krugerrands, the same coins she so desperately desires. She finds herself back in eighties New York, entangled in a heated romance with a dirt bag named Chez and a robbery, all thanks to her mother. The big twist being that Nadia is inhabiting the body of her psychotic mother Lenora. So it was in fact Lenora and Chez who schemed to steal the golden coins. Nadia was just an unknowing participant in the whole affair.
Lenora, who has a history of psychotic behaviour, finds herself in a toxic relationship with Chez. Together they plan to steal Vera’s fortune for their own gain. Chez and Nora break into the flat and steal the handbag of coins. They evenly split the winnings and Nora goes on an instant shopping spree, buying a fancy new sports car and a boot full of fur coats. Nadia doesn’t witness all these situations as she flits back and forth between timelines, but she eventually figures it all out. In the present, a fragile looking older Chez is no help, having either spent or lost his half of the fortune.
Nadia plans to return the family’s riches and her future inheritance by returning the sports car and fur coats, with Ruth handing over her very own wedding ring to match the difference. They exchange all these extravagant purchases for the Krugerrands, but Nadia loses them on the subway train anyway. She must travel further back in time, to the war-torn forties, to try and retrieve the gold once more. This time around, Nadia inhabits the body of her grandmother Vera and tracks down the family’s heirlooms in a Nazi warehouse. She buries the treasure in a tunnel wall and posts a map of the directions to Vera’s future home. It’s a complicated solution, although it works.
Having spent days traversing multiple timelines Nadia finds herself in the sixties and is helpless to see the heirlooms exchanged for the Krugerrands for the second time. She concludes that this a time loop she can’t undo, the money’s journey will continually follow this cycle for eternity. It’s a harsh lesson for Nadia to learn, Lenora will always steal the money and whatever schemes Nadia puts in place, the pattern will inevitably replicate. She concedes, you cannot change the past.
If Nadia’s arc teaches her anything, it is that family comes first and wealth isn’t everything. In the final scene she hugs her friends at Ruth’s funeral and smiles in the mirror, content with her current life choices, happy to be done with the curse of the Krugerrands, having tried every possible scenario she could. Nadia can now move forward with her life, with the knowledge that she tried, but she doesn’t need the family’s wealth to enjoy life.
