‘Suburra: Blood on Rome’ Series Finale Recap: The Fall of Rome

I was not prepared.

No, seriously, listen: I was not prepared.

For one thing—for one fundamental thing—I believed everything I’d read about Suburra: Blood on Rome, aka Suburra: The Series in Italian, being a prequel to Suburra the film. Since I’m an extremely spoiler-averse person—have been ever since a completely unrelated article in a random issue of Spin magazine unceremoniously blew the secret of Twin Peaks for me in 1999—I’d studiously avoided reading or learning anything about the Suburra feature film to which the show had been billed as a prequel. If I had learned anything about it, I’d have quickly realized the show wasn’t a prequel at all, but rather a Hannibal-style expansion and reimagining of its story and characters.

As a matter of fact, all I knew about Suburra the original film was that Aureliano Adami was a character in it. That was my lone “spoiler.” So you can imagine what I went through when…well, when this happened.

Aureliano fucking died! Died defending Spadino, his best friend! Shot to death! Buried at sea! Reunited with his beloved sister Livia in their shared watery fucking grave! Commended to the waters by Spadino himself, the sole survivor of the Aureliano-instigated shootout that saved Spadino at the cost of Aureliano’s own life!

I dunno, maybe you were smarter than me, or braver than me, or whatever descriptor you’d use to characterize people who’d gone ahead and watched the movie and realized that no, the series was no “prequel” at all, despite its near-universal billing as such. Maybe, unlike me, you didn’t hold out hope that Aureliano’s multiple gunshot wounds in the torso were non-fatal. Maybe you didn’t believe that Spadino and Aureliano’s absence from the battlefield when Nadia and Angelica arrived to rescue them meant that they were already on their way to a hospital or an underworld doctor. Maybe you didn’t spend the last fucking second of Aureliano’s screen time believing he’d suddenly regain consciousness and grimace his way through his bullet wounds toward survival.

But I believed it all, and boy, was I wrong.

So that’s how it ends. As Sicilian mafia princeling Badali puts it to his comrade Cinaglia, Manfredi and Aureliano are dead, and Spadino’s not. But nor is Spadino firmly in control of what remains of the Sinti Roma criminal empire. Rejecting his place at the head of the table, telling his wife Angelica he can never give her the love she deserves, he rides away, sobbing over the loss of the man he cared about more than anyone else. And that’s how we’re left.

As if that weren’t devastating enough, as if the murder of beautiful sad-eyed Aureliano and the fall from grace of his friend Spadino weren’t sufficiently harrowing, we also witness the apotheosis of Cinaglia as the Roman underworld’s new head. Instead of allowing his wife Alice to rat him out, he murders her and fakes a text-message suicide note to cover his tracks. Watching his children desperately try to comprehend the permanent absence of their mother—his daughter wonders if maybe she could return to kiss them goodnight and then go back to heaven, if you’re wondering how deep Suburra can plant and twist the knife—you realize he’s the biggest scumbag in a series full of stiff competition for the title, a far cry from the idealistic working-stiff politician who used to ride the bus to work.

Now, he’s living large with the file full of dirt that enabled Samurai to run Rome before his own murder, bequeathed to him by the underworld pencil-pusher Sibilla after Aureliano rejected it in order to race to Spadino’s aid—before Don Badali himself put a bullet in her head. Cinaglia is the new Samurai, even operating out of his gas-station cafe. Everyone else is just grist for the mill he now owns and operates.

Here, I suppose, is what it all comes down to. From the very start of Suburra the series, I believed it would tell us of the rise of Rome’s new kingpin, or kingpins plural, depending on who survived. I believed it would show us the triumphs and tragedies that led to the ascension of one or more ganglords, and leave someone firmly in charge.

Instead, it turns out it was all a tale of fatal hubris. Aureliano and Spadino could never hope to hold the disparate threads of Rome’s criminal enterprises together. The Romans, the Sinti, the Sicilians, the Vatican, the politicians, the businessmen—it turns out it was all too much for either man to handle. Aureliano wound up dead. Spadino wound up in self-imposed exile. Nadia and Angelica, who lost her baby due to Manfredi’s actions, cling to each other because they have nothing else left. The end.

And it’s amazing to think about everyone we lost along the way. Former main characters Gabriele and Samurai are dead. So is Gabriele’s father, and Aureliano’s father, and Aureliano’s sister, and Spadino’s brother. So is Sibilla. So is Alice. And there are additional absences to consider: Gabriele and Cinaglia’s former lover Sara is nowhere to be seen, nor is Adriano, the right-wing sports radio DJ who seemed like he was going to be a major player at the end of Season 2. Cardinal Nascari and his son Vincent essentially self-exile themselves. All that’s left is Cinaglia and Badali. It’s like our heroes barely even existed.

So let me say again that I was not prepared for this. So much so that it kept me from sleeping. I tossed and turned, unable to process the shock of what happened to Aureliano, and where it left Spadino and Angelica and Nadia when the show finally ended. I’ve never been so wrong about a series’ ending.

And it’s rarely felt so right. Suburra: Blood on Rome consistently surprised and delighted me. The central performances by Alessandro Borghi as Aureliano and Giacomo Ferrara as Spadino made me love them, full stop. And their fates devastated me, as only great art can do. With the possible exception of the German science-fiction thriller Dark—and honestly I could go either way on any given day—Suburra: Blood on Rome is the best television series Netflix has produced. The New Kings of Rome have fallen, but they live on in my heart. That’s all I’ve got to say.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.

Watch Suburra Season 3 Episode 6 ("Awakenings") on Netflix