‘Nine Perfect Strangers' Season 2 Ending Explained: It's All About Connections

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Nine Perfect Strangers
Season 2 of Nine Perfect Strangers has come to an end on Hulu.
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The show's first season arrivd in 2021, based on Liane Moriarty's novel and the nine characters within it that visited Nicole Kidman's Masha Dmitrichenko in fictional Cabrillo, California at Tranquillum House. Season 2 departed drastically from the novel, which told the singular story of characters played by Melissa McCarthy, Samara Weaving, Michael Shannon and more. Arriving nearly four years after its first installment, Season 2 of Nine Perfect Strangers watched nine new guests come to Masha's wellness retreat at Zauberwald, which included new technology she was working on and mysterious connections between the guests.
For a recap of the finale and insights into how Season 2 wrapped up as well as speculation about a potential Season 3, read on.
It's All About Connections
Mark Strong's David Sharpe, a billionaire and the father of Henry Golding's Peter Shah who was late to the retreat in the first episode, turned out to be at the heart of the whole experience, at least for Masha's plan for ultimate healing.
David's company Signal Op had military contracts, and through his multimillion dollar decisions, he made big ripples in the lives of all the other guests. Signal Op's 'smart bomb' affected Sister Agnes' (Dolly De Leon) former life as a nurse because she worked in war zone hospitals, and it also killed Matteo's (Aras Aydin) entire family. Signa Op's broadcast news channel also repeated aired the video of Brian's (Murray Bartlett) meltdown on set of his talk show Crabapple Clubhouse. He also pulled funding for a program to foster talented young musicians that left Wolfie (Maisie Richardson-Sellers) in a lurch. Once Victoria (Christine Baranski) caught wind of what Masha was doing, she demanded audience with the guru in a separate room to try and persuade her to stop, because Victoria realized that once Imogen made the connection that her father had worked for Signal Op and made the technology behind the bombs, she would put together why he took his own life — an experience that Victoria and Imogen revisited together under influence of the mycelium.
Dosing David with what looked to be 100% of mycelium, Masha conducted a trial of sorts where she pointed all of this out. While on the drugs, David vowed to stop manufacturing these bombs so that the tragedy would stop.
Masha Lets Go of Tatiana After a Near-Death Experience & Leaves Zauberwald To Martin
In the middle of this confession, Martin (Lucas Englander) stumbled down the stairs of the mansion also extremely high on mushrooms in an attempt to see his dead mother Helena (Lena Olin), who was Masha's health mentor and helped her after she lost her daughter Tatiana.
Viewers learn of the connection between Martin and Helena in later episodes, and Helena's feelings toward her son were complicated, but she wanted Masha to take over Zauberwald, feeling like she couldn't leave it to him. Both of them summoned her with the mushrooms, and after Martin tried to shoot Masha in a raging blizzard when she was following David outside as he tried to get cell signal to cancel bomb manufacturing, she still decided to leave the land and retreat center to him.
After her jarring fall to the snowy ground, Masha also said goodbye to her daughter, whom she had been conjuring with hallucinations through the mushrooms.
The Nine Strangers
Brian parted ways with his teddy bear puppet Jesse, who had been popping up hear and their to voice subconscious thoughts. He used to imbue Jesse with curiosity to talk to children and get them to open up on his television show. He didn't give up the antique marionettes with Sister Agnes though. The pair left the retreat in a car together, seeing headlines about David.
Wolfie and Tina (King Princess) didn't make it through the retreat together. Described by star King Princess as one of the most toxic lesbian relationships, their romance started to unravel within the first few episodes. It was Wolfie, though, who called it quits ultimately by moving her own flight up earlier once the roads had cleared. Later on, Masha watches Tina finally play piano — something she was struggling with since before Zauberwald — in a healing moment.
Christine Baranski'sVictoria survived her adverse reaction to the drugs which was due to her ALS diagnosis, something she had withheld from Martin and Masha.She saved her daughter and Peter a lot of time by saying that Imogen would make herself available to Peter whenever she could if he would just send a private jet. This provides opportunity for the pair to keep their romantic spark going. Mother, daughter and mother's nurse-turned-lover Matteo leave in the same car.
The Fallout From David's Trip & Confession
As the guests left the retreat, they each get cell service back and are bombarded with text messages as well as the headlines that show Masha has leaked video of David promising he would stop making bombs to the world. Wolfie sees a CNS banner in the airport that reads 'Billionaire Aquires Conscience?' It is assumed that the other strangers see this news alert on their phones and show it to each other on their way home from Zauberwald.
'Starting immediately, Signal Op is getting out of weapons production,' David says in the grainy surveillance footage from the other night as Peter shows him the video on his phone. 'Completely out, we will not spend another penny on hurting anyone.'
The other guests laugh and celebrate, with Agnes saying 'Masha, you little devil' and Brian declaring 'Eat shit, Satan!'
David wastes no time dialing Masha, telling her she has no idea how badly she's f*cked herself.
One Month Later
After a time jump, David pulls up in a nice Mercedes to a McDonald's wearing blue-tinted sunglasses, second guessing the address when he sees the golden arches. He is there to meet Masha, who is sipping on a soda or shake.
He dryly states that she 'dragged her all the way back to Bavaria' to take her to a McDonald's, to which she responded that he wanted a neutral location. David told Masha that she destroyed nearly a billion dollars of his net worth. He brags that he still has six left to correct her for saying five.
He slides a Nondisclosure Agreement across the table, revealing that he wants to open a new wing of his company focused on psychedelic therapy, wanting her to be involved. She would get $100,000 out of the deal, to which she responds 'That's it? That's what you think I'm worth?'
She refuses to sign without equity or any other meaningful controls, but David brought his black mail, showing her footage he secured of some of the therapy of Masha's experiments going wrong, like when Victoria had a small seizure from her dosage as well as Carmen's (Regina Hall) moment from Season 1.
David hacked Masha's personal servers through a payment to Martin, who complied with the request because he needs to keep the lights on at Zauberwald. David says the public won't see those videos if Masha signs the NDA that day. She threatens to make it very ugly for him and fight, and he says he's got a whole army behind him versus her debts.
Masha ultimately signs the agreement, sinisterly proclaiming that they are family and that they share a daughter. Viewers learned this season that David was the father of Tatiana. 'You may not love your family, but you can't get rid of them.' Then she reaches across the table to kiss David, saying 'I do' as they both smile at each other.
This cliffhanger of sorts leaves room for a third season with Kidman's Masha and Strong's David continuing on. They do, after all, have a romantic history, their dead daughter and that mysterious night in Prague they shared, to unpack should a new round of guests come their way in the future.
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