Once the chancellor, forever the chancellor. In the final episode of The Regime, “Don’t Yet Rejoice,” Kate Winslet’s delusional Chancellor Elena survives an attempted coup only to retain control of her country by the skin of her teeth. But in order to remain in power, she must make the ultimate sacrifice, leaving behind her beloved Herbert Zubak (Matthias Schoenaerts) as she becomes a puppet for American interests. On a new Still Watching, hosts Hillary Busis, Richard Lawson, and Chris Murphy discuss that surprising finale with Vanity Fair contributor and foreign policy expert Miriam Elder, who sheds light on where the fictional regime overlaps with actual authoritarian reigns.
Things couldn’t have looked worse for Elena at the beginning of the episode, as she narrowly escapes the palace with Zubak and is forced to wander war-torn Genovia in search of help. When the lovers wind up trapped in an apartment complex, it’s revealed that Elena’s former head of security, Mr. Laskin (Danny Webb), has defected to the other side and intends to have Elena answer to the rebel army for her crimes. Luckily for Elena, she has a guardian angel in Emil Bartos (Stanley Townsend), the oligarch she once humiliated on national television, who swoops in and extracts her from enemy territory. He offers Elena the chance to become chancellor of Genovia once more—for a price.
The price, it turns out is her beloved Zubak. While Zubak and Elena’s relationship seemed to reach new depths as they struggled to survive the coup, Elena ultimately chooses power over love, taking Bartos’s offer and sacrificing Zubak in the process. By episode’s end, the violent coup has amounted to nothing more than “a little bobble” in Elena’s reign, and she’s back on a balustrade at her palace—fully encased in glass for her safety—giving a speech to her adoring citizens on the 9th anniversary of Victory Day. Zubak is also encased in glass, lying in the tomb that used to house Elena’s father.
For Elder, aspects of The Regime mirrored actual authoritarian regimes that she’s covered in her decades as a journalist. “There are details that ring true. There’s real-life things that make a lot of sense on their own, like the infighting behind the scenes between advisers,” she says. But the combination of the details regarding Elena’s regime were harder for Elder to accept. “What made it hard to watch was trying to fit all those things together and figure out exactly what kind of an authoritarian country this was,” she says. “Authoritarianism is a concept, but each country evinces it in its own way, and each ruler uses it in its own way. This just felt like they were throwing everything into the bathtub to see what would swim.”
In Elder’s opinion, the country that the The Regime came closest to satirizing was Russia. “There were a lot of Russia vibes,” she says. “The paranoia that Putin started experiencing famously during COVID—when he would only meet people at a 20-foot-long table—happened when [Chancellor Elena] met with the US senator, and the hints at corruption, which are really what lead Putin’s regime more than anything.”
That’s all she wrote for this season of Still Watching. Stay tuned as Busis, Lawson, and Murphy tackle Netflix’s Ripley in the coming weeks. And as always, send any questions, comments, or thoughts about the finale to Still Watching at stillwatchingpod@gmail.com.