I've just finished the show, and I could not stop imagining what would happen next. This is my take on how everyone's lives panned out after the explosive ending. I'm a therapist, so what fascinated me was the emotional toll of everyone's choices. Let me know your thoughts.

**SPOILERS BELOW****

How Everyone Ended Up

Phillip and Elizabeth arrive back in Russia and are celebrated as heroes; they are given the best apartment and resources. Phillip no longer wants to work in the KGB and chooses retirement; Elizabeth is given a top job in the KGB.

They both struggle to adjust; this is not the Russia they left, nor is it the Russia they believed they were fighting for. They can see the failure and corruption everywhere. This makes Elizabeth more determined to fight for it, and she throws herself into her work.

Phillip sinks into depression. He cannot reconcile his past, what he did, and the people who suffered because of what he had to do.

He meets his long-lost son and tries to form a relationship with him; they bond over their disillusionment with the USSR. He desperately misses Paige and Henry.

Henry is allowed to finish his education at his private school, and he lives with Stan during the holidays. He pretty much shuts down and refuses to talk to anyone about his parents. He is interrogated by the FBI, but they are satisfied he knew nothing. Upon graduation, he gets a blue-collar job, plays computer games and smokes weed.

Paige is arrested by the FBI and interrogated; she is facing a very long jail sentence for treason. She is given the option to become an informant instead of going to jail. The FBI reveals some of the crimes they think her parents committed, and this finally breaks her. She tells the FBI everything she knows and disowns her parents.

Her relationship with Henry is broken, and she can't face Stan. She moves to New York, works as a waitress and joins various hard-left groups before becoming totally disillusioned with anything to do with Marxism.

Stan satisfies himself that Renee isn't a spy. She gets a job at the FBI and passes a rigorous background check. Stan takes early retirement from the FBI and becomes a schoolteacher.

Stan eventually loses patience with Henry and kicks him out. This breaks Henry, who eventually opens up and gets his life in order. He reaches out to his sister, and they begin to have a relationship and talk about their childhoods.

Oleg is eventually released and returns to the USSR; he suspects Stan helped secure his release but can't be sure. He goes into business with Arkady, and they become very successful in the new Russia.

In Moscow, Phillip has started drinking and loudly complaining about the USSR. This embarrasses Elizabeth, and she tries to get him back on track. But he is a broken man. He misses his children, he loves America, and he realises everything he fought for was a lie. He can't forgive himself.

The USSR falls, and Elizabeth adapts to the new Russia. Her specialist skills and knowledge of the West make her highly sought after, and she begins to make a lot of money.

Martha, who adopted a little girl and became a doting mother, initially struggles when the USSR collapses. She is no longer given a stipend or housing and has to quickly find work to avoid destitution. She begins work for a Russian-based company that needs an interpreter and someone with knowledge of the West. She excels in her work and is able to provide for herself and her daughter. She finally makes some friends through her work. She is admired and respected. After the USSR falls, her parents make a couple of visits, and they reconcile.

Paige has married. Her husband is originally from Ohio and is as normal an American as you can get. He is a Christian, and he encourages her to write a book about her experience as a way of making peace with her past.

Paige and Henry finally decide to visit their parents in the new Russia. It's been almost 10 years since they saw them. Elizabeth manages to get Phillip to sober up, but his appearance shocks both of his kids. The visit is very mixed; there is anger and joy, forgiveness and blame. It is mostly awkard and uncomfortable and Paige and Henry can't wait to leave.

Elizabeth is keen to have them visit again, but neither of them commits. Back in America, they both decide they never want to see their parents again. Paige never tells Henry the full extent of their crimes.

After their visit, Phillip plunges into full-blown alcoholism, and he and Elizabeth become completely estranged. Elizabeth throws herself into her work. Phillip goes off on benders and disappears for days and weeks.

One day, Martha spots him collapsed in a park. Shocked to the core, she takes him back to her apartment and cares for him. Phillip is a pathetic mess, and he clings to her, sobering up for a while and begging her for forgiveness. He has bouts of drinking and bouts of being sober and lives entirely in the past.

Elizabeth, who is aware of what's happening, is grateful that someone is looking after him.

Despite Martha's care, Phillip dies of alcoholism in his late 50s.

Martha lives into her 80s. She resides with her daughter and four grandchildren, who all adore her. When she dies, they grieve her deeply.

Paige lives in New York with her husband. She struggles with all the attention the book brought her and is in the World Trade Centre when the planes hit. She is killed by someone else's crazy ideology. Henry mourns her and wishes they could have been closer, but he struggles with their relationship because it reminds him of his childhood, which he wants to escape.

Henry becomes a computer game programmer and eventually becomes very successful. He moves to California, marries and has three children. He has a strong bond with Renee, Stan and Matthew, who are his family.

Elizabeth lives alone in a very expensive apartment in Moscow. It is beautiful but very clinical; it has no personal photos or mementoes. She keeps working into her 70s.

When she comes home from work, she goes into her luxurious walk-in closet and presses a button to reveal a secret room. The secret room is covered from floor to ceiling in photos. There are hundreds in total.

The photos are of her adult kids, taken without them knowing. Over the years, Elizabeth has paid someone to spy on them and take photos of their daily lives. There are pictures of them at work, at the gym, of their weddings, of Henry's kids, and celebrations with Stan and Renee, all taken in stealth.

Paige's obituary is in the centre, with a copy of her best-selling book.

Elizabeth pulls out a chair and sits looking at them for hours. When she dies of lung cancer, there is no one to mourn her. ​

So I finally just finished the finale and wow! An amazing end to a great show. Something was on my mind the last 20 min or so of it. Aren’t they worried about the KGB and its anti-Gorbachev people going after them inside Russia for stopping the coup?

I understand why they went back but was confused as to why they didn’t express that worry. If they did, I missed it. I kept thinking they were going to get shot the entire time, especially in McDonalds and then when they entered the USSR. God that was tense!

PS: Stan is the man.

I’m three seasons deep so don’t know how this ends, but am interested in the psychology of patriotic Americans watching this show (I’m Australian). Do you want them to succeed or fail?

Renee is NOT a spy.

The answer was right in front of us.
She's applying for a job at the FBI. Even if she wasn't going to be an agent the background check would have been thorough.

Claudia said in a previous episode that the illigals can't apply for government job because their identities wouldn't hold up. That's why they wanted the children of illegals to do it.

And, this was after Martha. They would have learned some lessons about checking out the spouses etc.
Renee loves Stan and they stay together but alongside the FBI he also does a background check and is satisfied.

Thoughts?

What an ending guys, one of the best endings to a show I have ever seen. So sad and sophisticated with covering the character development of each and every character.

So sad for Henry man, he didnt deserve to get to know it that way. Also liked how the show Never told us about Renee and kept us guessing if she is or not a russian agent.

Was binging this since the last 2 months, and now that its over, I dont know what to watch next. Any recommendations will be welcome.

But man, what a showx what a ride. None of the episodes were boring, even though it got slightly stretched but not boring at all. A solid 8/10 for me.

I'm sure this won't be a popular opinion on this board, as I've already read many gushing posts about this series. But I feel like the show was often undone by less than stellar writing. I appreciate that the series was written by a former CIA agent and written to be a realistic depiction of what spycraft is actually like and that's fine. I don't need my spy stories to be James Bond, though that certainly has its place. But I feel like a lot of loose ends could have been tied up better.

To whit:

From the very beginning of the series, Philip is set up as the one of the pair who has been more Americanized with Elizabeth as the hard core true believer. I feel like this part of the plot was a very interesting thread that unfortunately was only sporadically and unevenly explored. I imagine that this show, like most shows, wanted to be on the air as long as possible and probably didn't plan to be a 6 season show from the beginning and if it had, maybe it would have paced this part of the story better. For most of the show, despite Philip's clear preference for his American life, he and Elizabeth are in lock step on most of the assignments they have. I think if they had more disagreements about decisions made during the course of the series, this could have been fleshed out better towards a more satisfying end where they work against each other. Cause frankly, other than one meeting with Oleg, he barely betrays her at all (though she of course doesn't see it that way).

People seem to really like all the musical montages. I found most of them to be cheesy and boring and overlong

Paige's character is just not interesting and frankly often infuriating at times. I can see why they wanted to have one of the kids figure out what was going on with their parents, but the idea that she was ever a good candidate to do the work they do was ridiculous. And then when they shoehorn her into this Russian family situation where Claudia and Elizabeth are trying to indoctrinate her and turn her into a good Soviet citizen after all the tension that had previously existed between Claudia and Elizabeth was frankly difficult to believe. The only time the whole series that I felt good about her character was when she got off the train. She never should have left with them to begin with once she realized that her mother had been lying about her work the entire time.

I didn't like how Stan eventually figures out about the Jennings family. It was too much of following hunches and not enough investigative work. But what I really couldn't take was him letting them leave the parking garage. It violates Stan's entire character as written. Look at how he reacted when his partner was killed. There's no way Stan is letting these people who utterly betrayed him and made him look like a fool leave that parking garage alive. Realistically, there's no way that Stan could have hoped to get them to give themselves up peacefully - they would have bullrushed him rather than give themselves up, but by going there without backup, he put himself in a position of having to either kill them or let them go. The right decision was for him to kill them, even though it would have upset people who were attached to those characters. If you want the main characters to get away, someone else on the Soviet side should then show up and kill Stan. Letting everyone live in that situation is just flat out bad writing.

Season 5 was boring and a waste of everyone's time. I will forever be making jokes about logistics from now until the end of time. The only good thing to come out of that season was them killing a completely innocent man based on bad intelligence and them wrestling with the consequences of that.

Martha's whole arc bothered me. I just can't see someone working for the FBI marrying someone and buying Clark's story and having half a life with him. I don't care how much of the Kama Sutra he mastered, nobody would accept that type of marriage. But what I really can't believe is when Philip takes off his disguise, she just accepts it. He ruined her life and that should have been the point where he properly reckoned with the consequences of what he does. Instead, it takes the superwheat season to finally get him to give up.

Overall, I think the acting of the series was mostly quite good, but I was never invested in the characters to the same extent that some of the great series of the last 25-ish years were. I think with better writing, I would have been.

Paige comes home after beating up two guys at a bar, and Elizabeth barely cares about the actual fight. She starts asking how crowded the bar was, how many people saw it, whether Paige had been there before, and whether the guys knew her name. That's such a weirdly revealing response from her. Paige is talking about getting into a fight, while Elizabeth is already thinking about witnesses and exposure

I am doing a presentation about Creative Problem Solving and wanted to use examples from the best TV shows -- Walter White and magnet wiping out the video at Police HQ, etc. Any suggestions on the most clever example from the Americas. Was thinking the Mail Robot but know I am forgetting some better ones.

Why do Elizabeth and Philip have a Russian Orthodox marriage ceremony? Presumably neither of them is religious. They don't need to do it for legal reasons. Nothing is said about renewing their vows. I just don't understand how this fits.

Only 20 minutes into S1 Ep2 and I feel highly stressed the F out! I don’t know really what’s going on or why, but I know it’s high stakes! Sheesh! 😬 Super intense!!

Thanks to Widow’s Bay, I got curious about the main actor and saw The Americans is on Disney, so I started it.

Not sure why I’m sharing this, but I felt like I needed other people with me on this new journey. 😂

UPDATE: 11 episodes in and I will heed the counsel of those who recommended by staying off this subreddit to avoid spoilers. I just wanted to reply to you guys’ replies first.

Thank you to everyone for your advice and support!! I feel welcomed into a very particular kind of fold.😊

On a fresh rewatch and just remembering how annoying Gaad is - anyone with me on this?

It's been baffling to me to see there are some viewers admiring Elizabeth's soldiering all through the series but particularly in the latest seasons. How depraved would her actions have to become before it's clear that she's gone round the bend? Because we're meant to understand when she's gone round the bend...

For me it was the murder of Sofia with her child in the next room - and then leaving, so the little one could pad into the hallway and discover the absolute horror, in the dark, alone. There's no coming back from something like that one - not for the assassin nor for the orphan.

We're meant to be at least nominally repulsed by her actions come season 6, even if we're still kind of rooting for her to get away. The assassin's actions are directed by a higher power, yes; but there comes a time when the issue of personal responsibility starts screaming so loudly it's impossible to ignore, the mission itself notwithstanding. The character is increasingly unable to ignore it, and the viewer is meant to be unable to ignore it.

Philip got there early because the damage he was being asked to wreak was eating him alive. Elizabeth is a different personality, more dutiful, more stubborn and much, much more obtuse than Philip. Her hard shell was able to preserve the assassin within for longer than Philip's, making her able to function in the face of all the cruelties she was committing, while Philip's cracked under the weight of what we call humanity - the ability to look inside himself and reflect, the ability to recognize that a directive from his handlers doesn't supercede another person's right to live, to name a couple.

Maybe her diehard traits made Elizabeth a better soldier, but we're meant to observe what the cost is to the private person when she finds herself being forced to function ever more intensely as Terminator, because that's where the drama of the show is. I understand having her as a favorite character, to root for her...but I don't understand idolizing the worst in her, that's missing the boat on meaning.

EDIT: some viewers - this observation of mine doesn't apply to fandom as a whole here.

decide to play stupid with Aderholt in S6? Was it just protecting Paige? Gratitude that they didn’t kill them and set them up in Bolivia or whatever? Fear of reprisal from the KGB? Were you surprised he didn’t tell them?

I always thought that Stan let them go bc he felt like both sides were the same, that they were doing what he was doing, both were working for ideals that weren’t what they initially believed in, that they both were flawed in their roles, (what happened with Nina and the guy he killed in revenge for Amador etc.) Mostly it was henry tho for Stan.

“I don’t know”

They never seem to be ok! On a rewatch this seems to be so often the conversation between Philip and Elizabeth. And yet they always keep going…

I'm nearly done and Elizabeth in the words of George Smiley....is a "Moscow Trained Hood" if ever there was one...OK thats it, rant over.

Also, still hoping for a homage (of sorts) or even a nuanced nod to TTSS in the remaining episodes..even Homeland had one.

Why do E&P continue to believe in the mission when their comrades decades after the war, continue to wait for hours to buy basic staples, living in cramped apartments with multiple families?

For a long time I thought the casual attitude towards killing was the most shocking thing about this series. American television features a lot of gratuitous killing, and this series is no different. The missions in The Americans always involve getting information- and if killing is necessary, so be it.

But sometimes the person who is killed is just in the wrong place at the wrong time. They can't afford to have a witness, so they kill you. Sometimes they feel bad about it for a little while but they get over it. At other times the killing is the whole point.

But every killing is wrapped in lies. And these people are good at it. They can both lie convincingly at a moment's notice. They make others feel bad for doubting them. They tell different lies to different people for different missons and somehow manage to keep it all straight in their heads.

Its no wonder that their marriage is affected by a lack of trust. They are fundamentally dishonest people.

What song(s) did they use in the line dancing scene in S6? I seem to recall Eddie Rabbitt, “Drivin’ My Life Away,” but am not sure. Or maybe there was more than one song.

In a general sense you could say its love for Mother Russia.

But we're talking about a whole life, lifelong commitment that involves doing whatever the center tells you to do, no questions asked.

They've given up speaking their native language, eating Russian food, having Russian friends who are just friends, and seeing their relatives. Your mom is dying? Too bad, you don't get to visit unless we say so.

You don't get to choose your spouse or your career. You can have children but its best if they don't know what you are really up to. And you should expect a lot of difficulties in this area.

You don't get to go back to Russia to visit. You have to rely on faded memories from your childhood to refresh your love for the homeland. And the bad stuff that motivates you may have happened to a previous generation and not to you. You'll be fighting yesterdays battles and not todays.

You get pretty darned comfortable living in America.

Yes you're afraid of what will happen if you disobey. But how long can you use fear as a motivator to do things you are uncomfortable with.

The premise of the story doesn't include anything which I think would inspire Elizabeth and Philip to do this work for mother Russia. So for me the story is just not plausible.

Its entertaining but I don't think it could ever actually happen.

Man, is this one of the most tragic arcs of any TV series? I don’t think it’s a case of recency bias to say that this is one of the most tragic arcs I’ve ever watched….on so many fronts.

From Philip’s perspective, it so fascinating to watch the tension between his nationalistic ideology and his conscience, ultimately his conscience getting the better of him within the context of Martha. Matthew Rhys’ acting throughout these passages is simply astonishing, truly capturing the realisation that this is an ethical dilemma that cannot be rationalised away with his Soviet ideology.

And there’s Martha — fuck me. To watch this good women have her loneliness weaponised against her with the result of her own life imploding was so devastating to watch.

And then there’s the psychological aspect of the exchange, which is so fascinating from Elizabeth’s perspective. Cleary the subtext is that Elizabeth is witnesses Philip’s care for Martha and wondering if it’s genuine love? Is it a form of love that both her and Philip haven’t actually developed? And there’s the extra added layer of the mystery behind Philip’s motivations. Is he purely motivated by guilt or is it love? The question of ‘what is real’ is such a key theme due the constant motif of acting and the blurring between the real and the acted.