The Queen’s Gambit: Why Beth Stays In Russia

WARNING: Spoilers for The Queen’s Gambit.

The Queen’s Gambit ends with Beth Harmon playing chess in a Russian park, so what’s the true significance of the scene? In the series finale, “End Game,” the 20-year-old protagonist (Anya Taylor-Joy) reaches the pinnacle of her career and becomes an international celebrity, yet she seemingly passes on the opportunity to celebrate her win at The White House. Rather than leaving Moscow ASAP, Beth makes a spontaneous decision that could leave some Netflix streamers unsure about the character’s motivations.

With The Queen’s Gambit, writer-director Scott Frank subverts audience expectations through his storytelling and character development. In the series premiere, young Beth (Isla Johnston) wanders into the basement of the Methuen Home for Girls and encounters a suspicious janitor named Mr. Shaibel (Bill Camp). The Queen’s Gambit implies that something could go wrong through its lighting and pacing, yet the ultimate reveal is that Beth not only learns how to play chess but proves that she can compete with adults. For a narrative twist, Frank incorporates a drug addiction issue that Beth struggles with for most of the series, from a pre-teen to an adult. Episode by episode, The Queen’s Gambit details how Beth is objectified and/or misunderstood by male admirers, all the while celebrating the personality traits that make her such a unique (and fictional) character. Just as Beth’s strategic moves are complex, her decision-making similarly results from the totality of her life experiences, not just from one drunken mistake or from a surrealistic vision. The Queen’s Gambit is a circular story about paying it back and pushing forward in life.

The smaller moments in The Queen’s Gambit series finale foreshadow the ending. Early on, Beth remembers her childhood and the painful fact that her birth mother attempted to kill them both in a failed murder-suicide. Later, while speaking with her longtime friend Jolene (Moses Ingram), Beth tells an anecdote about a pop artist buying an original piece of artwork by Michelangelo and erasing everything. As both a woman and a chess player, she’s worried about her legacy and that she’ll self destruct. During what essentially amounts to a tour of her childhood home (a Kentucky orphanage), Beth reconnects with her roots and learns how much the late Mr. Shaibel cared for her, evidenced by newspaper clippings that he kept in the room where he taught Beth. Thematically and stylistically, the final images of The Queen’s Gambit visually reference the moment that Beth decided to learn the game of chess.

On a deeper level, the ending of The Queen’s Gambit highlights Beth’s evolution as a woman, and as a human being. After defeating the Russian Vasily Borgov (Marcin Dorociński) in his own country, Beth experiences a genuine outpouring of support from the audience and even from her opponent himself, which results in a natural high and a connection with her fellow humans. Moments later, Beth learns that she’ll be used as a prop in the United States; a feeling that she’s all too familiar with based on how admiring people treated her in the past. So, rather than following the rules, Beth subverts expectations in The Queen’s Gambit by exiting the airport-bound vehicle to enjoy a walk by herself; a moment of reflection. It just so happens that she wanders into a park full of Russian chess players, many of whom surround her in a showing of support, even after she defeated a top Russian player. In the moment, Beth seems to realize that she’s reconnected with her humanity; a full circle sequence which thematically links to her humble origins in the basement with Mr. Shaibel.

In the final moments of The Queen’s Gambit, Beth honors the legacy of her mentor by achieving her potential and remembering where she came from. Her worldly life experiences also parallel with Mr. Shaibel’s humble day-to-day existence as a janitor; a concept that Charlie Kaufman so poignantly explores in I’m Thinking of Ending Things. As The Queen’s Gambit comes to a close, Beth exits the vehicle because she’s now able to see big picture; she’s able to better assess the concept of risk and reward. Just as Mr. Shaibel took a risk and changed Beth’s life for the better, Beth – now a fully confident young woman in The Queen’s Gambit – takes a risk and lets her guard down far away from home. She’s free. As the Russian writer Mikhail Lermontov once said, “Life is a bank, fate is the dealer, and I am the player.”

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Q.V. Hough
(1892 Articles Published)

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Q.V. Hough is a senior writer at Screen Rant. He’s also the founding editor at Vague Visages, and has contributed to RogerEbert.com and Fandor.

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