Summary
Loot Season 3 builds to a couple of cliffhangers in a perfectly reasonable ending that has its share of questionable moments, but works better than expected given how ropey the rest of the season has been.
I’m happy to report that the ending of Loot Season 3 is a lot better than I expected it to be, given the currently ropey state of the show. It builds to a couple of cliffhangers, suggesting Apple TV+ hasn’t lost faith in it, which is fair enough, and it finally gets Molly and Arthur on the same page in a way that is almost coherent. But more on that below.
In the simplest possible terms, it works. It has moments of fine comedy and surprisingly tender characterisation, and it does very much feel like everyone is getting over the really obvious hump of Molly and Arthur’s breakup. The cliffhanger rings a bit false in that regard, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Molly’s Master Plan
With John and Luciana getting married in the Italian countryside and the FBI raiding the Wells Foundation, Molly develops a strategy that should address both problems at once. She plans to take down Luciana by exposing her real identity at the wedding, ruining her big moment, and nixing her spurious claims about the foundation.
This is easier said than done since Luciana has done a good job of purging her real identity from the internet. But there’s always a physical copy, so Molly takes the entire gang to Delaware to acquire an old yearbook from her high school. Cue a lot of Delaware jokes. And I mean a lot.
But the real purpose of this sequence, especially given Molly never uses the kompromat she acquires by promising a sizeable donation to the school, is to put Maro and Arthur in the same place for the first time. Molly is still dating Maro, and Arthur is still pretending he’s fine with that, but it’s obvious this is all going to come to a head.
Luciana’s Face Turn
Molly triumphantly arrives at John’s ludicrous new countryside villa with every intention of using the yearbook to discredit Luciana, but when she finally gets an audience with her, she finds her in floods of tears. John has ditched her at the altar. This guy just isn’t very good at relationships (though it should have been obvious from his hasty proposal that the whole thing wasn’t going to work).
Naturally, Molly’s instinct is to support Luciana in her time of need. And it pays off, since the moment of tenderness compels Luciana to call off the wedding, reveal that she’s not actually Italian, and then throw a giant party on John’s dime. She also promises to call the White House and call off the investigation into the foundation, so Molly gets her way without having to resort to dirty tactics.
See? Communication works! This side of Molly’s character is the one that Arthur sees, and her actions here help to inform their relationship, as we’ll see.
Arthur and Maro Make A Surprisingly Funny Pairing
I really haven’t liked anything involving Arthur and Molly this season. People have been onto me in the comments about it, but while I understand that the arc of the season has been about Molly losing touch with everything she cares about, I would still argue that it hasn’t been properly handled and that not enough has been made of her bizarre behaviour (or, connectedly, people like Nicholas openly endorsing it and then the show expecting us to forget about that entirely.)
But the ending of Loot Season 3 does a decent job of clarifying its position through Arthur’s odd interactions with Maro. The latter — who, despite being a moron, seems absurdly sincere — asks him for advice in making a relationship with Molly work, and Arthur advises him to stick with it because Molly is worth the effort. He also points out that all the extravagant billionaire stuff isn’t the real her. This was his point of contention in the first place, though I never bought it as an insecurity. I don’t think Molly’s wealth ever made him feel emasculated; I just think he was genuinely put off by the kind of behaviour she displayed in, say, that bird-watching episode.
In watching an old couple romantically dance at the wedding, Molly and Arthur see their potential future together, and both are finally honest with each other about how they feel. They decide to give it another go and get up on the dance floor, but Maro suddenly appears and decides to theatrically propose to Molly. Upstaged, Arthur also decides to propose. And this, weirdly, is presented as a difficult decision for Molly, even though she has just realised that Arthur is the one she wants. Maybe marriage wasn’t exactly what she was thinking.
Loot Season 3 ends by leaving the outcome of this up in the air, and also refusing to clarify the decision Sofia has made regarding her potential career change to run for Congress. We’ll pick up on these threads in Season 4, I suspect, which at this point feels inevitable. I hope it’s a bit better overall.
