The ending of Supersex makes the same mistake that the entirety of Season 1 has, which is focusing on Tommaso and his relationship with Rocco, rather than on Rocco and his relationship with the sex industry. Of these two interweaving threads, the latter has been far more intriguing, and even here in Episode 7, “The Cock Comes Last”, so much time is wasted on the state of Tommaso’s life that Rocco’s seems to occur on fast-forward.
Thanks to the show’s non-linear structure and more fanciful surrealist elements, it hasn’t always been clear what is real and what is imagined. That ambiguity is cleared up in the finale, at least, which is conclusive in some respects. However, it remains vague in others, and can’t quite bring itself to answer some key questions.
Briefly, let’s take account of how we got here. Essentially, there are three competing threads at play: Whether Rocco can stop putting his profession and addiction ahead of his personal life; Tommaso’s downward spiral; and to a slightly lesser extent Lucia’s reinvention of herself, free from Tommaso and, eventually, Rocco. As Season 1 comes to an end, these three narrative tracts all intertwine.
Tommaso Is Alive
In the present-day timeline, it has been suggested multiple times that Tommaso is dead. Everyone believed that he killed himself after his café was burned down. He never saw Carmela before she died, and she never met his son, Claudio. Lucia moved on, and Tommaso became a ghost, figuratively speaking.
The implication when Rocco spotted him a few times in 2004, then, was that he was seeing things. However, in the finale it was revealed that Tommaso was indeed alive, having been living in isolation for years. He’s a mess, but he has a final plan. Armed with a revolver, he plans to turn up at Lucia’s wedding to Jean Claude, and presumably kill one or both of them.
Before that, he spends the day with Rocco. They trash his old restaurant, get sage advice from an old hooker, and stay in a swanky hotel. While Rocco’s in the shower, Tommaso leaves and heads for Lucia’s wedding.
Tommaso Is Dead
Despite holding the “happy” couple at gunpoint, Tommaso has a change of heart. He can’t bring himself to harm either of them, at least not in front of his son, and he flees the scene. Rocco follows and eventually drags Tommaso home to his secret hovel, which is full of family pictures, most of them – rather creepily – of Rocco.
Rocco tenderly puts his brother to bed. After he leaves, a gunshot strongly implies that Tommaso has committed suicide. Rocco blames love for the downfall of his brother, whom he always idolized.
Does Rocco stay with Rosa?
After coming to his misguided conclusions about love, Rocco decides to break things off with Rosa, the model he had clearly fallen in love with and cast in his film. Rosa is Siffredi’s real-life wife, Hungarian model Rosa Caracciolo.
However, at the end of the season, Rocco returns both to work and to Rosa. He tells her he loves her, and a conversation they had earlier implies that they would try to have a baby together. In real life, they have two, Lorenzo and Leonardo.
So, yes, Rocco does end up with Rosa. By all accounts, they live happily ever after, and Rocco continues to work in the adult industry for many years, despite retiring several times.
How does Supersex Season 1 end?
Supersex ends with Rocco having found love if not a way to manage his addictions. It ends with Tommaso presumably dead, though this isn’t confirmed. And it ends with Lucia marrying Jean Claude, though it’s implied that her heart will always, on some level, belong to Tommaso, and perhaps to a lesser, weirder extent, to Rocco.
It’s hard to say that much was learned in all this, and in many ways, the ending is deeply tragic. It doesn’t seem like Rocco had much more to do with his other brothers, Lucia isn’t exactly thrilled with Jean Claude, and Rosa will never have a husband she doesn’t have to share with many other women. It’s hard to imagine Rocco’s relationship with sex becomes much healthier either.
All in all, it isn’t light-hearted fare. Let that be a lesson to you, folks.
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