Cast, Creator Kathleen Jordan on That Finale Death – MASHAHER

SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers for the first season of “The Decameron,” now streaming on Netflix.

When the Black Plague is no longer the most lethal threat in the land, that’s when you know that things have gone off the rails. And that’s exactly where Netflix’s new series “The Decameron” ends, with its privileged pandemic refugees struggling to survive a storm of egotism, greed and a touch of late-stage heroism.

The dark comedy from creator Kathleen Jordan is loosely inspired by the 14th century short-story collection by Giovanni Boccaccio, and follows an increasingly desperate group of wealthy Italian citizens who hole up in an isolated villa in Florence to escape the scourge of bubonic plague gripping Europe in the 1340s. In the finale, the group haphazardly take up arms against mercenaries hellbent on laying siege to their safe haven to force them out into the sickness-infested countryside.

In defense of their communal home, the group suffers a few losses. Mustering some eleventh-hour courage to defend his lover Stratilia (Leila Farzad) and her son, the once-offish Tindaro (Douggie McMeekin) is cut down after an impressive bit of sword play. In an attempt to help his friends escape the chaos, a grief-stricken Panfilo (Karan Gill) wields the body of his dead fiancé Neifile (Lou Gala) like shield of pestilence to deter the intruders, only to be turned into a pin cushion of arrows. Elsewhere, a few of Sirisco’s (Tony Hale) new peasant friends succumb to the violence, and the one-eyed leader of the mercenaries loses his good eye — and his life.

But they all pale in comparison to the most shocking death of the finale, which happens in a quieter scene in the bowels of the wine cellar. All season, Misia (“Derry Girls” star Saoirse-Monica Jackson), the devoted servant of Pampinea (Zosia Mamet, of “Girls”), has bent to the will of her mercilessly selfish boss, who came to the villa to marry its lord and live happily ever after –– unaware he had already died of the plague. Desperate to maintain her status despite that hiccup, Pampinea has undermined the group at every turn in favor of her own interests, and was cast out in the penultimate episode only to bring the mercenaries to their front door in a misguided attempt to reclaim the villa.

Recognizing her mistress will never change, Misia lures Pampinea to the cellar and convinces her to hide in an empty barrel until Misia comes back to get her when the fighting is over. But after Misia seals her in, she sets the barrel and the cellar on fire, killing her boss and severing the toxic ties of her servitude.

“This was such an inflection point in the writers’ room,” Jordan tells Variety. “We called it ‘barreling Pampinea.’ We talked constantly about whether Misia could actually barrel her? We were still asking ourselves that question along the way, as we were shooting and editing scripts. ‘Are we really going to barrel Pampinea? Have we earned it?’

“And I think we did because Misia can’t be free until she is free of this woman, who is, like, a succubus.”

Pampinea’s fate was batted around in the writers’ room so long that Mamet says she and Jackson didn’t learn about it until midway through the production.

“We talked to Kathleen about it, and we talked about it a lot with each other,” Mamet says. “But what we inevitably came to was this idea that Misia realizes that there really isn’t room for both of them to exist in the world in a healthy way. If they are in each other’s proximity, they will never break out of this toxic mold. They are too cemented in that dynamic.”

But with the toxicity between Misia and Pampinea, Mamet notes there was love there, too. “We talked a lot about their history, and we realized they’ve probably been in each other’s lives since they were young,” she says. “They are each other’s most consistent relationship. I don’t think you spend that much time with someone without having a modicum of love for them.”

Yet the question remains: Was it murder or mercy? Pampinea proves time and again that she was immovable even during a global pandemic, but did Misia need to burn her alive to rid herself of her mistress?

According to Jackson, Misia is devastated by how much Pampinea has taken from her. She killed a potential heir to the villa to protect Pampinea’s claim, and discarded her burgeoning romance with Filomena (Jessica Plummer) to remain faithful to her mistress. When she takes Pampinea down to the cellar, Jackson says Misia has already made up her mind.

“I’ve been heartbroken many times in my life, for sure — but I think my biggest heartbreak has definitely been from friendships, not something romantic,” Jackson says. “There are wounds we carry on with us, and while theirs is not a friendship per se, I could really feel that gaslighting between them.”

It’s also no coincidence where Misia chooses to, effectively, quit her job. When she and Pampinea first arrived at the villa, Misia smuggled her plague-infected girlfriend hidden in a barrel into this very wine cellar, only for her quickly to succumb to the sickness. One could read the fiery end for Pampinea as a cleansing moment for Misia, who sings a song with her boss as she entombs her, before quite literally setting fire to what ails her.

“I think there is some kind of closure,” Jackson says. “That’s a nice way of looking at it. Even her singing when she’s walking up the stairs is nice, because she is normally singing for everybody else or Pampinea’s benefit. But Pampinea isn’t listening to that by the end. So as she sings for herself and the music plays over the fire, it was all a bit chilling!”

Ultimately, Jordan, Mamet and Jackson all agree Misia’s motives were not as cut and dry as either murder or mercy. Why can’t it be all of the above?

“Saoirse said something that resonated with me, that this ending is probably nigh for Pampinea no matter what,” Mamet says. “So she feels like the most compassionate thing for her to do is to kill Pampinea herself. So that it is done, in a truly dysfunctional way, from a place of love — as opposed to leaving her to the hands of someone else.”

By the moment, the two women switch roles. Pampinea has been so coddled her whole life that she doesn’t know how to function as an adult. “She is stuck in an arrested development,” Mamet says. “She is very much a child, and I think that’s where we leave her. I don’t think she understands what is even happening. She thinks that Misia is doing what she always does. She is fixing a problem, and then she will be back with some snacks.”

Conversely, Misia finds a youthful glow once she leaves Pampinea behind.

“I said when we were filming that she ages backwards through the show,” Jackson says. “To leave her in that really youthful and hopeful, wistful and ethereal place, I think that is her true soul. It was a nice way to leave her.”

Jordan says the guiding principle in the writers’ room for whether a character lived or died was if they grew and adapted to their situation. Some valiantly fell on the sword of that growth for the greater good (i.e. Tindaro and Panfilo), while others like Pampinea paid the steeper price for not evolving as much. But Misia almost didn’t escape the undertow of Pampinea’s influence.

“The Misia-Pampenia scene, there were about 17 different ways we entertained that scene going down,” Jordan says. “One of them was where Misia dies too, because she wants to rid the world of Pampinea, and she will even sacrifice herself to do it. But I think through her love story with Filomenia, she earned survival — because she learned how to stand on her own two feet and be her own person. Plus, it is fun to think about her and Filomenia going and sharing a peasant life together as medieval lesbians.”

Audiences will have to speculate wildly on whether that actually happens, because the season ends with the survivors gathered in a hollow of ruins and weeds, entertaining each other with belly-achingly hilarious stories to pass the time and avoid thoughts of their grim outlook in the wilderness. Do they survive the plague, at least? Though “The Decameron” is billed as a limited series, Jordan says she is open to exploring that question, or possibly jumping ahead in time — should Netflix want more of this medieval romp.

“There is a world in which the survivors’ story continues, and there is a world in which we jump to the 1500s, and we are talking about sex, shame and syphilis in France,” Jordan says. “There is a world where this becomes an anthology to talk about all these things. But it is all up to the metrics, and the Powers That Be.”