‘The Serpent Queen’ Season 2 Ending Explained – A Bloody and Brilliant Climax

The reason the Red Wedding became such a cultural phenomenon is that nobody really saw it coming. Sure, anyone who had read the books – which only constituted a tiny portion of the audience for a show that popular – had an incline, but for everyone else, it was unexpected. Surely no show would kill half of its cast out of nowhere?

I bring this up as it’s the most obvious comparison for the ending of The Serpent Queen Season 2, but I think it’d be too easy. Episode 8, “All Saints Day”, does indeed revolve around a massacre at a wedding, but nothing about that is surprising. The plot has been setting it up throughout the entire season, and anyone even cursorily familiar with real history knows that the main claim to fame Catherine de’ Medici has is the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.

So, I’m not sure how to describe the finale. It’s quite brilliant in its execution, and it’s very bloody, but it felt more like a calculated inevitability than a shock. The pleasure – though that’s perhaps not the right word, given the circumstances – is in seeing how Catherine manages to pull it all off.

Margot Is France’s Most Desirable Woman

The scheme is so complicated that the episode runs over an hour. As we learned in the penultimate episode, Catherine has promised Margot to Henry, Jeanne of Navarre’s psycho son, which she’s less than thrilled about. Margot just wants to be with François de Guise, even though she’s being pined after by her own brother, Charles, who thinks he’s doing her a solid by proclaiming that she won’t have to marry Henry as long as he’s still King – which he won’t be for very long, since he’s dying of tuberculosis.

Margot suddenly being the most desirable woman in France is important since she’s the only realistic way to avoid all-out war with Sister Edith and her Protestant army. In the previous episode Catherine had assured Edith that once the marriage is complete and consummated, she will make her Queen-Regent, thus concentrating true power in France in Protestant hands. But this isn’t an ideal solution for the Catholic League, for obvious reasons. To this end, Antoinette instructs François to sully Margot’s honour so that they have grounds to call the nuptials off, lest his turncoat brother be handed over to the League.

Poor Margot falls right into this plan and takes it as a minor victory until Charles just so happens to stroll in and catch her and François in flagrante delicto, which causes him to flip out and ensure that Margot will marry Henry after all. This situation was predictably manipulated by Catherine, and begins a cascade of villainous double-crossing that fills the rest of the extra-long runtime.

The Bloodshed Begins

So, next on Catherine’s agenda is Jeanne of Navarre, who wants a full and thorough examination of Margot after hearing a convenient rumour that she has been deflowered. Catherine agrees very politely and then sends Angelica to kill her with the aid of some gloves laced with poison. This is the first death of the Season 2 finale, but far from the last.

You know, as a viewer, that the big events are being saved for the wedding banquet, partly because Catherine keeps happily inviting people there and being performatively excited about how great it’ll be. One of the guests is Alessandro, who is about to leave France for Florida with Rahima. Alessandro thinks that Catherine has no idea about their relationship, but Rahima knows better. Alessandro insists on attending, though, and Rahima, who is pregnant with Alessandro’s child, gets locked in her room, which you know immediately doesn’t bode well.

The Serpent Queen | Image via STARZ

The Red(Ish) Wedding

For what it’s worth, the wedding itself goes off without a hitch. Antoinette tries to throw a spanner in the works by prompting François to object on purity grounds, but he pleads the fifth. Margot and Henry are married, and the marriage is consummated in record time thanks to Henry sensing that Margot is devastated and pretending to finish immediately. This is weirdly sensitive behaviour from Henry, who like one scene prior explained how he didn’t have any feelings at all, but it spares Margot any further indignities.

Nobody else is spared anything, though. The second Edith asks about the regency Catherine cuts her throat, and Anjou and his friends storm the place in masks and just butcher everyone. Alessandro gets killed by Ruggieri with a cheery note that it was at Catherine’s behest. Montmorency, who naively thought that he and Catherine were going to run away together, gets stabbed by Angelica. Everyone else, including several key Bourbons, is laid to waste by a combination of Anjou’s men and Rahima’s spy network. The only meaningful survivors are Charles and Henry, who – presumably thanks to his good deed in the marital bed – is protected by Margot.

The Ending of The Serpent Queen Season 2 Sets Up Another Outing

But there’s more devastation to follow. Thanks to the situation that Catherine has engineered, Edith’s followers are likely to march on the palace and overthrow the Valois. Charles, who doesn’t have the stomach for this kind of thing at the best of times, orders them all to be killed in their beds. And so it is. All of Edith’s followers are wiped out and the streets of Paris run red with their blood.

It’d be deranged to call this a happy ending for The Serpent Queen Season 2, but then again happiness was already described by Catherine as a child’s ambition. At the end of the day she manages to retain power because she pins all of the murdering on the Guises and the Catholic League, eliminating both them and the Protestants in one fell swoop. There’s nobody left to challenge Catherine’s authority.

Except, of course, all the people who survive the finale. This includes pregnant Rahima, who swears revenge, the cardinal, and a couple of Bourbons. Oh, and it’s heavily implied given Charles’s consumption that Anjou will be taking the throne sooner rather than later, and Anjou is nuts. So, there’s that to look forward to.

Is there enough historical meat on the bone for Season 3? You’d have to assume, especially since this season has giddily rewritten history at every opportunity already. But we’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime, at least The Serpent Queen saved the best for last, with Episode 8 sending the season out on a real high.

Depending on your capacity for bloodshed, obviously.