Mind-bending Russian Doll season 2 finale explained by Natasha Lyonne and Charlie Barnett

It's just 30 minutes long, but the final episode of Russian Doll season 2 packs quite a metaphysical punch. If you need help sifting through what's real, what's not, and what it all means, don't worry — EW has you covered, sweet birthday baby. Let's break it all down.

After previously giving birth to herself (in her mother's body, of course) and stealing baby Nadia in an effort to give herself a better life, the finale starts off where the series began: at Maxine's birthday party for Nadia (Natasha Lyonne). Cue the laced cigarettes, weird birthday chicken, and Harry Nilsson's "Gotta Get Up!"

This isn't just another fun jaunt through the past, though. Nadia's little self-abduction has broken time, as is evident when Maxine's apartment building suddenly transforms into the old Yeshiva school it served as decades earlier. Alan (Charlie Barnett) is very upset — he can't believe after everything they've been through that his friend would willingly "collapse time." He pleads with Nadia to put the past right and return the baby.

His point is further emphasized when a whole parade of Ruths (Elizabeth Ashley) start coming up the stairs. Watching her beloved surrogate mother painfully trudge up the steps finally breaks Nadia and she agrees to take the baby back.

The moment is slightly off-putting, because it's implied in the previous episode that Ruth actually died, and Nadia wasn't there for her because of all of her time travels. Lyonne tells EW that the beloved character did in fact die "in that space between episode 6 and 7." "Time is what gives life its order. And its meaning, on some level, is that it is finite," says Lyonne. "These are ideas that are well-explored, but I think that Nadia is so hard-headed — or wants so badly to be able to affect some kind of change, or fix things — and in trying to rearrange the past, there is a karmic consequence wherein she misses that present moment."

Back in the finale, Alan and Nadia return to the train station wormhole, where the mysterious Horse (Brendan Sexton III) helps ferry them to their destination, train 6622. They get on and learn it's been a month since Nadia's birthday and she's beating herself up for not being there when Ruth died. Upset over this, she and Alan get off the train and wind up getting hit by a different one, and, in a very trippy sequence, appear to fall through time and space.

They land in what Alan's grandmother Agnes (Carolyn Michelle Smith) calls "the void," and like in season 1, they both must face their demons and learn their lessons before anything can be resolved. Agnes tells Alan it's okay that she doesn't know what happened to Lenny, the long-lost love of hers that Alan tried to save previously in the season during his time escapades. She also prophetically tells him, "You can't be so afraid of making the wrong choice that you don't live at all," which is exactly what he needs to hear.

"Season 1 was about breaking through these boundaries of death. And season 2 is now about actually being able to live that life," Barnett explains. "And yes, I 100% feel like it can be summed up to that small moment with his grandmother, that Alan isn't living, because he is so afraid to make the wrong choices. I know that I relate to that."

The actor, who was adopted and never got to meet his birth mother before she passed away, says he also can relate to his character's struggle in figuring out his identity. But, like Alan, he eventually learned to free himself. "There's something beautiful, too, about just connecting or finding the puzzle pieces that you think you need [in order] to fill in the blanks, but you realize are actually always with you," he says, adding that "for me, it's really about living, this second season. It really is."

Since season 1, the color red has represented Nadia, while blue has come to represent Alan, and naturally, after his encounter with Agnes, he follows a blue light out of the void and back to safety.

Nadia, meanwhile, finds her mother, Nora (Chloë Sevigny), and returns the baby. Nora asks if adult Nadia would choose her to be her mother again, knowing what Nadia knows now. All the characters from Nadia's season 2 journey (including both Ruths and both versions of her grandma) look on as she chokes up, and says, "I didn't choose you the first time, but I guess that's just how the story goes, huh, Mom?"

Nadia, finally accepting who she is and why she is that way, follows the red lights all the way back to 2022, and arrives at Ruth's wake. Time is fixed, the world is right, and Alan and all her loved ones are there. She heads to the infamous bathroom once more, and the season ends with a literal dose of self-reflection as she stands in the mirror, and, for once, smiles in spite of herself.

"There's nothing really to be that ashamed of here. I didn't create these events. This is just sort of how it is," Lyonne says of what the ending means to her. "And I think [in season 1] I wanted very badly for Nadia and Alan to sort of ask a question of, 'How do I stop dying?' Great. But really, for them, three and a half years later, [it's about] 'How do I start living? What does it mean to be present in a life and make the most of the time that we have in the here and now, with our set of circumstances? What would it take? Would it take a sort of time traveling device? Would it take me actually being there to see it all? Would it take my grandmother kind of signing off and saying, 'Hey, I'm telling you, kid, you're all right. You come by it honestly?'"

Lyonne continues, "At what point would I be able to walk free in life and say, 'It's okay that this is the way I am, and it's okay that this is the way you are,' and then sort of try to exist? What would it be like if that was how we were interfacing in the present?"

Read our full cover story featuring Lyonne and Charlie Barnett discussing Russian Doll season 2 here.

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