‘Vladimir’ Ending Explained – Let’s Answer All Your Burning (Aha!) Questions

Let’s be frank here – some, most, or indeed all of the ending of Vladimir could very well be a lie. It’s a possibility, is all I’m saying, since the series, a Netflix adaptation of Julia May Jonas’s provocative debut novel, is powered by the fourth-wall-breaking monologues of a deeply unreliable narrator in the form of Rachel Weisz’s nameless protagonist. Episode 8, “Against Interpretation”, features several key events – consummation of obsession! The outcome of the hearing! A potentially deadly fire! – that may or may not have happened at all, let alone in the way described.

But that’s the fun, right? So, I’m going to tell you what happened on-screen, and then what I think probably happened in actuality. Or, at least, I’m going to tell you my best-guess interpretation of the latter, since we don’t – can’t, really – actually know for certain. I also reviewed the season pretty extensively, in case you need a refresher on the premise or whatever.

Onward!

The Accidental Kidnapping

Towards the end of Vladimir, our protagonist – sometimes referred to as “M” in the context of the novel, which I’ll continue to do here – has finally lured the titular professor to a lunch date that just so happens to be on the same day as John’s Title IX hearing. The lunch quickly morphs into something else entirely, a semi-calculated power play to seize some control over her own life, which seems to be rapidly spiralling out of control.

So, M takes Vladimir out to her secluded cabin under the guise of writing together and living a little freely. They have a nice time; so nice, in fact, that M doesn’t want the experience to end. So, she makes it so by crushing up some medication she stole earlier and spiking Vladimir’s whiskey with it. When he loses consciousness, she binds him to a chair like a hostage. This is also, incidentally, where the series began, before winding back to explain how we got there.

Now for the big question: Did this actually happen? Yes, I strongly suspect it did. It’s probably important to note that I don’t think it was a calculated plan, as was implied when the season opened here, but instead M’s way of trying to retain control of a situation that, yet again, was spiralling out of her control.

Fantasy Fulfilled

When Vlad wakes up, M feeds him some nonsense that he seems to swallow, but he’s admittedly pretty thrown by her Hail Mary confession that John and Cynthia are having an affair. This has the desired outcome of keeping Vlad around, distracting him from the whole hostage thing, and even freeing him up to pursue a sexual interest in M.

Real or not? I think half and half. The stuff about Vlad putting M off by doing things that emphasize their difference in age – the jeans in the dryer, the attempted role-play where she’s his professor – almost certainly happen, as they perfectly puncture the idealised image of the tryst that M has built up in her head. And I think some version of the sex happens, but perhaps not quite as depicted.

The clue here is that the sex scene directly mirrors M’s early fantasies. This doesn’t seem like an accident to me. Having the real deal match an imagined version of what this encounter might be like suggests that M was defaulting to her rosier interpretation to paper over the disappointing real thing. This theory is supported by how little interest she has in Vlad after the fact. Instead, she just wants to hurriedly focus on finishing her novel, the fulfilment of her desire, however disappointing, having awoken her renewed creative instincts. The novel was never about Vlad, really, but about her.

John Is Innocent (But Not Really)

There’s no real ambiguity around the outcome of John’s Title IX hearing, since M isn’t even there, but it’s worth going over regardless. On paper, it might seem like a shame that John “got away with it”, so to speak, but that was never really the point of the trial. He was right that the relationships were consensual and the times were different; the students he had affairs with were also right that the power dynamics were unbalanced and the impact was scarring to them. Both things can be – and indeed are – true.

Whether or not John “learns” this – he clearly doesn’t – isn’t really the point, since the arc is crystallised through John’s relationship with Sid. While she defends him during the hearing, she also sees, especially through the rawness of Lila’s testimony, that her father preyed on people who were vulnerable to his status and deeply wounded them in doing so. Even if he can’t see it, he nonetheless did it. And it’s going to alter his relationship with Sid in a way that even he’ll notice.

M emerges pretty much unscathed, though. Lila doesn’t throw her under the bus because of the frank moment M shared with her earlier, when she explained that her work simply wasn’t good enough, that she didn’t try hard enough, and her not getting the scholarship was her own fault. Lila seemed to recognise the truth in that.

Burn It Down

Vladimir ends with M’s cabin catching fire, and M electing to save her manuscript instead of her husband or paramour. In the novel, she saves both, albeit with severe burns, and the manuscript is destroyed. Here, the manuscript comes first. After all, as I said earlier, it was always about M.

The show is deliberately ambiguous about whether John or Vlad dies in the fire. M, through her narration, claims that both survive, but she also claims that she writes a bestseller about a woman who becomes obsessed with a younger colleague, which also sells better than Vlad’s novel about a younger man’s affair with an older professor. Hers, she claims, met a particular need. This reads a lot like fantasy to me, especially with what’s going on behind her. There are zero suggestions that John or Vlad made it out, and if M is lying about the success of her novel, it stands to reason she may also be lying about the outcome of the fire.

Here is where I think she’s lying outright. I think the implication is that both men died in the fire as a consequence of M choosing to save her novel instead of either of them. But it’s open to interpretation, obviously.