Here's the Ending to New Netflix Show 'Russian Doll' Explained and Why It's so Good

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Russian Doll, season one

Russian Doll is the latest binge-worthy offering from streaming giant Netflix, an eight-part original series created by Natasha Lyonne (of Orange Is the New Black fame), Amy Poehler and Leslye Headland (the writer and director behind 2012's Bachelorette). It currently holds a 100 percent "fresh" rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, making it more critically acclaimed than other Netflix originals like BoJack Horseman, Daredevil and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

It's easily the best new show on Netflix in 2019 so far.

Russian Doll centers on a young woman named Nadia (Lyonne), who dies on the night of her 36th birthday party and then wakes up at the party again, only to get stuck in a seemingly never-ending loop of dying and reawakening at that party. So far, so Groundhog Day, but to compare it too much to that film would be reductive and an insult to what Lyonne et al have expertly pulled off here.

Midway through the season Nadia meets Alan (Charlie Barnett) in an elevator moments before it malfunctions, and they plunge to their deaths; "I die all the time," Alan tells Nadia.

It turns out that Alan and Nadia are dying at the same time, and first died on the same night. The rest of the season follows these two New Yorkers as they try to figure out why they keep dying. It's at this point that the show shifts from wacky-but-dark Groundhog Day comedy to a deftly written study of childhood trauma and mental health.

Both characters are self-destructive in their own ways. Nadia has little regard for her well-being and is haunted by memories of her mentally ill mother (who, by reaching the age of 36, Nadia has now outlived). Alan must come to terms with the fact that his "first death" was by suicide, brought on by the collapse of a well-ordered but unhappy life.

In the final part—after a horrifying penultimate episode—Nadia and Alan have embraced their personal demons and learned how to move on but have died and woken up in separate timelines on that first fateful night. A newly hopeful Nadia, filled with purpose, is a stranger to a drunken and despondent Alan, and vice versa.

In a finale, appropriately entitled Ariadne, after the figure in Greek mythology who gave Theseus the ball of string that got him out of the labyrinth, Alan finds himself trying to persuade Nadia not to sleep with a sleazebag at her party (which previously set off a chain of events that resulted in her original death in which she was hit by a taxi), and Nadia must prevent Alan from killing himself following the break-up of his nine-year relationship (his would-be fiancé has been having an affair with the sleazebag Nadia sleeps with).

The ending, though, has left some viewers confused.

In the final scene, after saving each other, Nadia and Alan's separate timelines converge (through clever use of split screen) as they join a parade of homeless people holding torches and wearing animal masks. Alan jumps and yells with joy while Nadia grabs a torch, a look of fierce determination on her face.

It's a fitting ending to a show that so acutely explores the nature of self-destructive behavior and the importance of self-reflection: Nadia and Alan have truly learned something profound about themselves and have thus broken their respective patterns of repeated unhealthy behaviors.

Creator and star Lyonne explained it like this to Thrillist: "It almost becomes a show saying, 'Hey kids, don't take yourselves out. Give yourselves a chance.'

"[Nadia and Alan] sort of find this common ground in each other of a reason to continue to show up for life, if not for themselves then for each other."

Co-creator Headland added: "I think a joking way to put Russian Doll is that life is the sum of your timelines.

"There are all these different versions of you because, even if they don't physically happen in a time-travel, magical-realism way, in your head you're still living that life where you made the choice to marry that guy, where you made the choice to stop talking to your family."

"It's always kind of lingering out there."

That probably won't stop the fan theories online, but Headland has said they have ideas for three seasons, so perhaps season two will clear things up further.