The following contains major spoilers for Snow Piercing Season 4, Episode 10, “Last Exit,” which premiered Sunday, September 22 on AMC.
Snow Piercing Season 4, Episode 10, “Last Stop” stops the train, and not a moment too soon. The Snow Piercing The series finale feels bittersweet, and not just because the TV series is ending after four seasons and a network change. The episode is a microcosm of the entire fourth season: fantastic in some places, disappointing in others, and making it clear that the series had simply gone as far as it could.
“Last Stop” picks up where Season 4, Episode 9, “Dominant Traits,” left off, with Andre Layton and his gang leading a massive charge to retake the train and stop Dr. Nima Rousseau from launching her world-destroying Gemini rocket. It certainly has all the action you’d expect from a series finale. However, it doesn’t even quite nail the problems from earlier in the season. But by the end, viewers will feel like this is the only way things could have gone.
The Snowpiercer series finale offers more than enough action
Season 4, Episode 10 Don't Rest on Your Laurels
Spectators will enter Snow Piercing Season 4, Episode 10 is expecting a mega battle — and they're getting one. Fans will have to decide for themselves if it compares to the train-taking mayhem of Snow Piercing Season 1, but there's a lot of action. And there has to be, because the show can't keep talking about the potential end of the world and piling most of its characters onto said train and then not deliver something huge. At least half the episode is devoted to scenes of the survivors fighting their way back up the train, taking out nameless and anonymous members of the military. Several characters die in gruesome ways, like a scene where fans can hear bodies being run over when some of the heroes use a vehicle to spray soldiers with stun gas. But this show has never claimed to be good.
Ruth Wardell: The battles, the losses, the compromises we made to save as many people as possible.
There is one significant problem with all the fight scenes: the series' cinematography causes most of the action to be masked by varying degrees of darkness. It can be hard to tell who's fighting who or what the outcome of a particular battle will be when it's so dark, which is a shame given how much fight choreography must have gone into this episode. But there's plenty of action, including Layton getting into a brawl with one of the Animal Squad that ends with him repeatedly punching a panel into the soldier's skull.
Josie also gets a chance to get revenge on Dr. Headwood for the experiment he did at the beginning of season 4. Her decision not to do so will likely divide fans. On one hand, the message of everyone getting a second chance is admirable. On the other hand, “Last Stop” makes a big deal about Josie being consumed by her anger and then the script doesn't show her recovering. She only tells Layton, and therefore the audience, so her change of heart feels rushed. This is a moment where the series finale could have done more, but can't because there's so much to get through.
Snowpiercer Season 4, Episode 10 Embed almost all
Most of the main characters have something to do with
An improvement that the Snow Piercing finale renews some of the previous episodes, the fact that the writing team involved almost all the key characters of the series. Even though the audience has a hard time seeing what he's doing at times, most of them are there. The biggest absence is Mike O'Malley's character Sam Roche, who was left behind to oversee New Eden and so only appears in the episode in the final act, after all the excitement has died down. Lena Hall's character Audrey also gets a small amount of screen time, but that won't surprise viewers who remember Audrey being on the verge of death in Season 4, Episode 2. But everyone else has at least a small part to play. In particular, Aleks Paunovic's fan favorite Bojan “Boki” Boscovic gets to save the day at one point; it's nice to see him doing more than he did most of the season.
Alex Cavill: It's not so much where you are, it's who you're with.
But it would have been against the show's overall theme (and the conventions of television writing) to do anything less. Snow Piercing has always preached this idea of community and togetherness, something highlighted again in the pre-credits narration of “Last Stop,” which is spoken by multiple characters. Not involving the entire community would be a slap in the face to the “one train” philosophy. Also, knowing that there are no more episodes, the writers have to serve as many characters as possible. And they avoid the temptation to kill off any of the main characters at the end, even though Bess Till comes very close to being sacrificed.
From the character's point of view, the one who suffers the most is precisely the one who has never been described well. Season 4, Episode 10 tries to humanize Nima when Melanie Cavill berates him, insisting that it's his fault the entire world has gone into the Freeze. Nima has the predictable outburst of screaming that such antagonism would provoke, but eventually relents and tells Melanie and her daughter Alex to run as the Gemini rocket launches. Nima freezes to death when the rocket car opens to release the rocket. But it's too little, too late to give depth to someone whose characterization has been drawn through speeches all season. The eccentric Dr. Krieger from Archer He's a more frightening mad scientist than Nima. And the fact that he suddenly mellowed after so many episodes of arrogance seems completely flat.
Was the Snowpiercer series finale too predictable?
The final minutes offer nothing extraordinary
THE Snow Piercing finale pretty much delivers everything fans of the series could want. None of the main characters die, and the world survives after Alex sabotages the Gemini rocket, so everyone gets to live happily ever after in New Eden. The only way there could have been a happier ending was if the world had returned to normal, but the final moments of “Last Stop” hint at that, when some flowers are shown sprouting on a distant mountaintop. But the truth is, this was the only satisfying way the show could have ended. It was depressing and dark for four seasons; no one wanted the series to end with the world dying or Layton and company losing. The audience wanted a victory and the characters needed a reason to stop fighting.
“Last Stop” has some of the pacing problems that existed throughout the film. Snow Piercing Season 4 also. The battle for the train can't last the full 42 minutes, so most of the final act is dedicated to everyone celebrating in New Eden, including the trope of ending with a musical montage. Lena Hall is still a fantastic singer, but so many TV shows use needle drops to end their seasons or series that it's boring to see it happen here. Plus, it's not that interesting to watch everyone sit around talking about the future. This is reminiscent of the slow-paced season 4, episode 8, as if the creative team was just filling up the remaining airtime. Any momentum or dramatic impact the finale had is gone well before the credits roll. The public will not look back at the Snow Piercing series finale as a memorable TV finale, but they'll be happy that the good guys won and that there's hope for the world, and that'll have to be enough.
All four seasons of Snowpiercer are now streaming on AMC+.