‘Stick’ Delivers the Ending You’d Expect, But Takes A Risky Approach

When Santi’s dad turned up in the penultimate episode, I think everyone knew that Stick was venturing into predictable territory just in time for its ending. And that’s fine, you know? This is the kind of show that has earned a guaranteed emotional payoff by playing the expected hits, and Episode 10, “Déjà Vu All Over Again”, certainly plays the hits. But it’s a risky finale all the same because of how closely it hews to the expected formula, how silly it can sometimes feel, and how evocative it ends up being of multiple entries in an iconic sporting franchise. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. 

In short, it works — but only just. This is a finale that toes the line of being so predictable that it loses something, but a strong climax — leaving things open for Season 2, naturally — and a couple of big character moments help to smooth things along. I’m still a bit dismayed that we don’t get any payoff to Mitts and Elena’s relationship, and Zero ends up being very sidelined after coming into her own as a character, but this is Santi and Pryce’s show, and Santi and Pryce dominate the finale. Unfortunately, so does Gary.

History Repeats Itself

Gary is awful, I think that needs to be said. Mackenzie Astin, who plays him, does a phenomenal job of making him thoroughly slimy and unlikeable, and the fact that everyone can see it except the one person who most needs to see it is a potential source of frustration in this episode. It should be more obvious to Santi than anyone that his father is up to his old tricks.

However, I’d make the counterargument that Santi’s character work has been strong enough throughout the season — think back to his outburst in Episode 6 — that the idea of him being susceptible to Gary’s manipulations isn’t totally out of left field. This isn’t a kid who has healed, but one who has merely taken a few steps on the journey. And the people around him are right that they can’t intervene; it’s a lesson he has to learn for himself. The only problem is that he’s learning it on the final day of the Ready Safe Invitational, when he’s at the top of the leaderboard with nowhere to go but down.

I know I said this already, but Mackenzie Astin does a really, really good job of selling Gary’s sinister turn. The second Santi starts making mistakes — which are his fault in the first place — the venom starts mottling the surface. And Peter Dager, to his credit, does an admirable job of showing the creeping dread that takes over him as history begins to repeat itself.

The Rocky Connection

Peter Dager in Stick | Image via Apple TV+

Stick‘s ending takes a surprising amount of inspiration from multiple Rocky movies. I know that franchise has sort of become the sports movie rubric ever since the ’70s, but the comparisons are even more overt than you might expect. Let’s round up the key ones.

• The outcome of the invitational evokes the first Rocky movie. After finally sending Gary on his way and reuniting with Pryce, Santi has to pull off some magic to make the final heat against Collin Morikawa competitive. Of course, he makes a couple of miraculous hits, including a putt that rolls in after being sent in the opposite direction, and everyone celebrates as if he won the competition. However, a throwaway line from Morikawa suggests he probably didn’t, just like how Rocky loses a split decision to Apollo Creed. However, Santi wins the hearts and minds of the audience, which is what matters.
• At one point, Zero helps Santi get in the right headspace by leading the entire audience in a rendition of Simon & Garfunkel’s Cecilia, which takes a little too quickly for my liking. However, what follows is the crowd following Santi on the course like the training montage in Rocky II.
• At the very end of the episode, Santi and Pryce are out on the course. Santi is adamant that, despite his age, Pryce could still play professionally, and challenges him to a game as a way to coax him out of retirement. Pryce finally relents and takes up a club. Santi kicks things off with a respectable swing, and then Pryce takes his own shot. We don’t see it — the camera instead focuses on his face, and cuts briefly to Santi’s amazed reaction. The ambiguous mentor/mentee showdown evokes Rocky and Apollo’s behind-closed-doors third fight at the end of Rocky III.

All’s Well That Ends Well

Ultimately, the ending of Stick accomplishes what it sets out to do, it just takes a riskily predictable path to get there. The whole ordeal with Gary might have been better served in a penultimate episode that then gave Santi and Pryce a clear run-in for the finale, keeping the tournament’s outcome separate from Santi’s personal daddy issues. But on balance, weaving the two together like this worked okay.

Some stuff is left unaddressed, though, which is a shame. Mitts and Elena’s romantic relationship gets no payoff, we don’t know if Zero remained with Santi — although we can assume she did — and it would have been nice to see how Amber-Linn responded to Santi’s success. There’s also very little made of the Clark Ross dynamic; we glimpse him once, celebrating Santi’s historic putt with the rest of the crowd, making a gesture to Pryce that implies he might be happy to let bygones be bygones.

Some or indeed all of this might crop up in a second season, which may very well find Pryce making another run at a pro season, perhaps even with Santi as a potential opponent. The possibilities are endless, and I think the show has earned a continuation, albeit sometimes in spite of itself. Time will tell. For now, at least, we can celebrate a show that started a little shakily, managing to just about stick the landing.