SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers from the series finale of “The Regime,” now streaming on Max.
The finale of HBO’s limited series “The Regime” may have thrown Chancellor Elena Vernham to the wolves in her own war-torn country, but Kate Winslet was just happy that her character finally got to stretch her legs.
“It was actually wonderful to be outside,” Winslet tells Variety. “The byproduct of Elena’s insecurities and mental issues was that we were always filming inside, either in real locations or in studios. The great gift of Vienna and some of those phenomenal palaces was incredible. But this is a pretty interior show, so the finale was a blast to be running around in the freezing cold in the U.K.”
Heading into the conclusion of “The Regime,” the consequences of Elena’s disregard for the people of her unnamed, fictionalized Central European country came crashing through the palace’s front door. The insurgents of the brewing civil war seized her vulnerable fortress, and claimed a few valued staff members –– RIP sweet Agnes (Andrea Riseborough). Forced to flee on foot with her lover and trusted adviser Herbert Zubak (Matthias Schoenaerts), Elena treks through the wilderness and complains about the inconvenience of this coup. Not sure how to make it through, the pair haphazardly search for help, and witness the devastation her reign has wrought.
Courtesy of HBO
Series creator Will Tracy says the limited options available to the completely stripped-down Elena and Zubak — as they trudge through the woods, and through the ruins of poetry centers — gave him the chance to play up the ambivalence that she still has about her destruction. “It was great fun, because not only are you writing on a string with this propulsive forward momentum, but you are traveling directly through the fruits of Elena’s labor,” Tracy says. “You finally get to see the world that she created and how people are living and precisely how out of touch she is. Yet she still doesn’t seem to fully understand what she is seeing, and how she is responsible for it despite her face being rubbed in it.”
The tragic humor of her continued self-serving worldview is on full display as Elena tries to identify the few allies –– China! her husband! social media! –– she thinks she still has in the world, all of whom are out of reach. Winslet says that while her recent roles in the 2021 HBO crime series “Mare of Easttown” and “Lee,” an upcoming film about World War II photojournalist Lee Miller, have been phenomenally rewarding, they didn’t offer an opportunity for laughs like Elena’s desperate final act of survival.
“It was extraordinarily fun, and taking her as far into the world of the absurd and ridiculous that she goes to in Episode 6 given where she begins, is, for me, the great pay-off of the show,” she says. “It was like being given permission to be as John Cleese as I can. Because we did the homework, we laid the foundations, we understand why she is the way she is, and this is her breaking free of all of that. Having to deal with the elements and the outside world and the cold and the people and feeling unsafe — suddenly, she kicks into this bizarre resourcefulness that is so misguided. It was just brilliant.”
Along the way, Elena and Zubak hitch a ride with Tomas (Karl Markovics), a rambling and seemingly harmless townie who gives them a car ride from hell that becomes perhaps the show’s most purely comedic encounter.
“There is Matthias and I, and Karl — squeezed into that teeny, tiny car — and we are improvising up a fucking storm and just having such a hoot,” Winslet says. “There are outtakes of that car sequence where even the cameraman is laughing, and I’m having to turn to him and say, ‘Al, you can’t laugh and just drop the camera.’” There is a blooper reel that goes on for 11 minutes of us in the back of that car.”
Despite their mirth, Tomas ultimately imprisons the couple in his house to turn them over to the opposition, a predicament that completely decimates what little fortitude Elena has left. In a panic, she starts stabbing herself repeatedly in the wrists –– acting on previous threats of suicide when things get tough. It is a drastic tonal shift from the hijinks of her determined fight so far; even now, Tracy questions Elena’s motives in those moments.
“All of her wiles as a leader and her presentational magic are useless in that room, so the mask can drop and she becomes fatalistic — and yet there is still a glimmer of that old self-pity,” he says. “You wonder, though, how honestly suicidal she might really be. Or whether this is another beautiful piece of theater from a master performer.”
Courtesy of HBO
On the other hand, Tracy says audiences can trust Zubak’s ravenous fight-or-flight aggression to break them out of their claustrophobic prison.
“With Zubak, you really see his genuine attempts to protect her — not only physically, but also to put the yoke back into the shattered eggshell of her ego, which he sees collapsing right in front of him,” Tracy says. “That ego has caused him great pain, but he knows without it, she is not her anymore.”
Ultimately, the very skill that Elena relinquishes in that moment –– her curated, sturdy persona –– is what comes to her rescue. Violently whisked off to a much glitzier interrogation room, Elena is confronted by former ally Emil Bartos (Stanley Townsend), who, in so many words, informs her that she can take back control of her country if she agrees to let the ill-balanced partnership between his cobalt mines and the American government pull the strings from behind the scenes. Quickly, she realizes the revolutionaries’ problem –– despite everything, Elena is still the only one who can quell further unrest.
While it should seem ridiculous to hand a completely disastrous leader a second chance at ruling, Tracy says we need only look at our own political circumstances to see how dangerously plausible it is. Although he doesn’t mention any names, it’s hard not to think of former President Donald Trump while watching Elena’s re-ascension.
“Let’s not put too fine a point on it,” he says. “It has happened many times before. Leaders have survived attempted coups, leaders have been deposed in the most seemingly humiliating fashion, and then they come roaring right back. These people cling on, especially if they are able to hang onto this rump of fervent, fanatical support that will never leave them until that rump ages out of the planet. That is what they do, it is all about self-preservation. So sadly, I find it all too plausible Elena could do this, especially if people like her can find some sort of foreign approbation.”
The other condition of Elena’s simultaneous surrender and ascension is that she must sacrifice Zubak, whose volatile arrival in her orbit clearly contributed to the escalation of unrest. Bartos says the people will not accept her return if he is by her side. Once she is allowed to visit Zubak, Elena spins a much more positive take on the situation, making the case they should accept Bartos and the Americans’ deal just so they can plan their own future coup from the inside. Zubak plays along even though he seems to pick up on how expendable he is in this scenario –– a fact later confirmed when their first real rest in days is interrupted by him being shot and killed for the cause.
Months later, Elena has been reelected, she has allowed her husband Nicky (Guillaume Gallienne) to return from the exile she imposed on him, and she addresses her adoring citizenry from the balcony of the palace –– from behind the protective walls of a bulletproof glass box. In the series’ last scene, she delivers flowers to the freshly encased body of Zubak, now occupying the same underground sanctum that her abusive father’s body once had (until insurgents quite literally tossed his corpse from the palace).
The sequence, scored by Chicago’s “If You Leave Me Now,” leaves audiences to ponder how far Elena has come, despite this familiar and morbid communion with her past. If nothing else, Winslet found the brief glimpse into Elena’s life after love an enticing tease.
“It would be so interesting if there was a Season 2 where this all goes, but I think, for me, there are many different ways you could construe the finale and what happens,” Winslet says. “I found the ending incredibly moving. I feel the love that Elena and Zubak have for each other — that they should never have had for each other — was real, and becomes really sad. And you are totally sucked in by this love affair between these two misfits.”
Tracy confirms he has no plans for a second season, questioning what could be done since the show already explored the story of civil war and political theatrics. But he does agree with Winslet that Elena’s life ruling under the influence of a shadow government is an alluring prospect.
For now, the bigger question coming out of the finale is whether Elena has learned anything from the events that cost her country thousands of lives.
“My conclusion might be that she is someone who, in the course of the series, has convinced herself that she can change and has changed, or at least tries to tell herself a new story,” Tracy says. “But ultimately, I think it is probably too late for her to change and given how difficult it will be for her to be under anyone’s thumb, it would be easy to see her go back to her old ways if it means her own survival and being in her comfort zone, which is a gilded cage. But maybe she was a rare bird of paradise that was bred to live in a gilded cage and that is her fate.”
Right to the end, Winslet appreciates that Elena remains unpredictable ––something a new haircut and a reclaimed throne aren’t likely to change.
“I feel that she has made peace with herself in some form, even if it is temporary,” she says. “Even the choice we made with her hair, because it is suddenly different at the end. It is that kind of slightly white, sharper and shorter hair that was our way of embracing a sort of post-menopausal Elena whose beauty is more ingrained in her body and she had become more accepting of everything about her feminine self.
“Or has she?” Winslet continues. “You just never know with her! At any moment, she could be anything, or say anything. You don’t know if she is going to stand in the rain and take off all of her clothes one minute and jump into the back of a car the next. I can’t tell you how much fun that is to play.”