‘Dead to Me’ Season 3 Was a Touching Triumph for Christina Applegate

Warning: Major spoilers for Dead to Me Season 3 ahead.

Dead to Me’s third and final season destroyed me. But the bittersweet farewell and its unexpected twist wouldn’t have hit nearly as hard without a moving, multi-faceted, masterful performance from Christina Applegate.

Liz Feldman’s Netflix series has always been hilarious, charming, amusingly chaotic, and deliciously binge-able. But in its final 10 episodes, Dead to Me pushes itself by fully exploring more serious topics, like grief, guilt, and unconditional love. Through laughter and tears, Jen (Applegate) and Judy’s (Linda Cardellini) complex friendship continues to fuel the show until the very end. But Applegate’s versatility, emotional authenticity, and commitment to this story takes Dead to Me’s sendoff to the next level. And the fact that she filmed these episodes after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis only makes her final act more monumental.

To say that Applegate and her character each had a lot on their plates in Season 3 would be a severe understatement. Jen was still recovering from the loss of her husband while healing from her own hit-and-run. She was parenting two children while pregnant with a third. She was struggling to cover up Steve’s murder and trying not to swoon over his identical twin brother Ben (James Marsden). And she was unpacking her complex relationship with her late mother while caring for her best friend with Stage 4 cervical cancer. In an interview with Variety, Feldman shared that although she knew how she wanted Jen and Judy’s story to end for quite some time, she was fully prepared to scrap the last season if Applegate wasn’t up to it. The star felt they needed to finish telling the story — not only for fans, but for themselves. So while her character was going through it, Applegate was facing her own challenges on set, from using a wheelchair and cane to having to shift her filming schedule.

Whether Jen was frequently dropping F-bombs, locking herself in her car and cathartically shrieking to death metal, asking what sadist put together the playroom in the radiologist’s office, or giving herself balloon boobs while tripping on mushrooms, she kept us laughing with brutal honesty and relatable frustration. Amidst the deeply unfunny realities in her and her character’s lives, Applegate effectively infused Dead to Me‘s most somber season with heroic humor, and swiftly pivoted to summon the waterworks.

Grief has been ingrained in Dead to Me‘s DNA from the start, but for Jen, it all culminates in Season 3. She’s not only losing her best friend, she’s reliving her mom’s struggle with breast cancer and confronting her husband’s death head-on in her final days with Judy. Though Jen peppers the season with emotional subtleties, we also see weighty releases, like when she snaps, “Jesus Christ, fine!” before breaking down in tears and earnestly praying for Judy to be OK.

Applegate’s most powerful performance undoubtedly unfolds in the finale, which shows her character finding humor in the most hellish hours and saying an emotional goodbye to Judy. As Jen tearfully cradles Judy in her arms, drives the ’66 Mustang home alone, and peers up at the rainbow of paper cranes Judy made during treatment, Applegate’s delivery remains raw and soul-stirring.

At certain points throughout the series, it’s hard not to view scenes with the context of Applegate’s own health struggles in mind. The scene where Jen fears being diagnosed in the hospital and says, “With the year I’m having? I can’t take anymore bad news,” cuts like a knife. The fact that Jen’s mom died from breast cancer holds extra weight because Applegate is a breast cancer survivor. And seeing Jen act as a caretaker for Judy while the roles were reversed with Applegate and Cardellini in real life felt, at times, a little too much like a cruel twist of fate. But Season 3’s parallels to reality weren’t all bummers. Cardellini opened up to Variety about how the Applegate’s diagnosis and the challenges they faced while filming made their friendship stronger, and that genuine love for one another is undeniably obvious in these episodes.

Season 3 of Dead to Me is many things. Among them, it’s the final chapter in a love story of unlikely friends. It’s a vehicle for achieving closure. It’s a show of strength for Jen, who spent all 10 episodes trying her best to protect loved ones, put on a brave face, and work towards accepting things outside of her control. But it’s an even bigger show of strength for Christina Applegate, who, in a touching triumph, gave a career-great performance while finishing this story for herself.

All three seasons of Dead to Me are now streaming on Netflix.