Many things can and will be said about the ending of A Round of Applause. It certainly isn’t a happy one. It also isn’t strictly clear about what’s real and what’s imagined, what’s literal and what’s metaphor, though none of Season 1 has been. Either way, Episode 6, “The Return”, is a finale steeped in metaphor and vague visual storytelling that leaves plenty open for the interpretation of the audience.
Let’s try and unpack it.
The finale finds Metin of a similar age and appearance to how he looked in Episode 5, and in the womb in Episode 1, but we’re to understand that years have passed. Mehmet and Zeynep are aged; they talk like they’re on the cusp of death. Metin is no longer a DJ, but instead panhandles in the street with a fake snake, pretending to levitate while painted completely orange.
Why is Metin painted orange?
As early as Episode 1, Metin longed for his past life, which he claims was inside an orange. He can recall it quite vividly and associates the idea with the freedom and peace that this life has not provided for him.
At the end of Episode 5, Metin broke the fourth wall in a minor breakdown, during which he cried and asked the production crew if he could finally go back to the orange now. Since it’s a fantasy, he couldn’t, so he has done the next best thing by painting himself that color as part of his “act”. Metin longs to be inside the orange rather than live his life in the real world.
Was Kudret real?
By chance, Metin encounters Kudret, the man who occupied the adjacent cell while he was still in Zeynep’s womb. However, crucially, Kudret does not remember Metin at all. He claims his name is Serdac, and he’s a successful author.
The implication is that Kudret was another fanciful idea that Metin clung to, like the orange. In meeting Kudret in the real world but being faced with the prospect that he never knew Metin in the first place, Metin has to confront the idea that he was always wrong and delusional; that he has spent his entire life trying to escape it, to return to a safe place that was only ever a fiction.
Do Zeynep and Mehmet get divorced?
By this point, Zeynep is ready to confess how she feels to both of the men in her life. She starts with Mehmet.
Zeynep has wanted to divorce Mehmet ever since she spoke to the alternate version of him on the phone in Episode 2. For the first time, she confesses what they spoke about, and why she has loved that man ever since, but not the real-life version she has lived with. The honesty and openness of that conversation changed her forever and held her in an inescapable cycle of unhappiness.
Zeynep begs Mehmet for a divorce, just to have that satisfaction before they die. Eventually, she realizes he has fallen asleep, a lifetime of never listening to her made literal. He wakes up from his nap satisfied.
How does A Round of Applause Season 1 end? Is Metin dead?
Finally, Zeynep goes to see Metin. While he continues to “levitate” and meditate, she confesses all of her parental anxieties and her profound disappointment in how his life turned out. She reminds him of the gifts he squandered, only to end up panhandling in the street. Metin hears everything but doesn’t dignify Zeynep with a response. When she leaves, he cries.
In the final sequence of the season, Metin’s fake snake comes alive and bites him on the neck. He falls to the ground, presumably to his death, and Zeynep looks down to realize she is pregnant once again. She begins to laugh and cry at the same time.
This ending is not to be taken literally. It’s a fantasy for both characters. Metin gets to imagine leaving this life and returning to somewhere safe, having failed his first attempt, while Zeynep gets to entertain the possibility of a second chance, another go-around in which she perhaps will not make the same mistakes she did the first time.
What did you think of A Round of Applause Season 1 Episode 6 and the ending? Let us know in the comments.
RELATED:
