The decision for an intense and powerful season was in the hands of Alex Levy (Jennifer Aniston) and the signs were not good, but The Morning Show managed to conclude with a game-changer over apparent snooker. The conclusion was at once inspiring, surprising, and cathartic, leaving enough open-ended, creating consequences, and making us wonder what else?

If you weren’t surprised how Paul Marks (Jon Hamm) knew how Laura Petersen (Juliana Marguiles) confronted Bradley Jackson (Reese Witherspoon) and decided not to report her to the FBI, you weren’t paying attention. In perspective, this scared Bradley more than knowing that the billionaire had accessed UBA’s hacked material and discovered the crime. I thought it was just a script error. Sorry The Morning Show! I’m half a mea culpa because not everything is always so well-tied up, but this detail was really crucial. Another satisfactory response we received was my complaint about Alex’s ambition to “be at the table” of the company’s decisions and not do anything else. Alex, unlike Shiv (Sarah Snook) in Succession, made the bold and right decision, even if unrealistic.

So Alex didn’t care at all about the lives of Chip (Mark Duplass) Corey (Billy Crudup), or even Cybill Reynolds (Holland Taylor), but she was genuinely shaken by the fates of Bradley and the network’s employees. We see that Bradley’s panic moved everyone, but that only Alex managed to reach his colleague. This was after she was forced to leave her phone and purse outside the apartment so they could talk. The reporter explains to her friend what many of us didn’t realize: that Paul won the game with a dirty strategy. His ability to anticipate everything everyone did against him was simple because he was hacking everyone’s every move all the time. Including his girlfriend.

This time Alex is a little less reactive, but she still rejects the idea of such cartoonish villainy. She takes a test when going home: she sends a text message to Bradley with the “wrong” word, the city the journalist said she would be going to. When she arrives at the apartment and finds a solicitous Paul (closing her laptop the moment she walks in the door), she makes it seem like she’s nervous about the business and not him. She asks about the leaks about Cory and Bradley and is disappointed when her boyfriend not only admits that he planted the news but “would do it all over again.” People hang themselves without knowing, right? Alex hates Cory but knows he is far from being a sexual predator. Manipulating the press to stop the investigation into Hyperion while destroying Cory to take ownership of UBA before stripping it to generate more capital to finance his failed rocket program may work in Billions, but not in the Apple TV series Plus. However, the final blow is when Paul says the code she planted in the SMS he sent to Bradley. If there was any doubt about her character and that she was also being monitored that was eliminated. Paul was manipulating everyone, including her. And now?

It seemed too late. Cory and Cybill overcome all adversity in order to save the company and he gets the money and votes, but as he didn’t know he was still being hacked, he “loses” to Paul. Billy Crudup has been the star of the series so far, but especially this season. Cory’s immense ambition, in contrast to his skill and genuine empathy with women (especially Bradley), gained another dimension. A man with flaws, but three-dimensional. In his defeat, he leaves an emotional and honest message for his mother that we are a little sad to apparently “lose” him. He may even be able to legally free himself from sexual harassment allegations, but his career is in jeopardy. Another one who ends up in suspense is Chip. His unreal interview in which he exposes Paul Marks to the world is hilarious and leads to the billionaire’s downfall, but what happens to him? We will have to wait for the fourth season. There’s no way to remedy his unhealthy relationship with Alex anymore, apparently. But Chip will come back.

Aware that Paul is watching his every step, Alex swallows his ego and looks for Laura (whom he antagonized) to ask – apparently – to forgive Bradley. In fact, he asks, but asking for something even bigger than the coded SMS of “she’s up for it” only makes sense later. In less than 24 hours, Laura and Alex managed to merge two broadcasters and ensure that the business leadership remained with a mostly female team. Everything is theatrical and idealized and that works perfectly in a dramatic series (what a shame it’s still in the field of fiction). Of course, Paul is astonished to be with an intelligent woman by his side and to have forgotten this “detail”. Alex was alone and in control, she loved being with him, but Paul followed the usual rules of patriarchy: a woman in love would do anything for love. Not in the 21st century, not anymore!

Alex confronts her boyfriend in an elaborate intervention where Stella (Greta Lee) and Kate also have the courage to not only confront the man who (almost) destroyed their lives but to have the pleasure of seeing him humiliated as well. In a theatrical moment, we discovered that EVERYTHING was connected: the failure in the Hyperion One transmission was not the fault of the UBA, but rather of Paul, who made Kate cut the transmission to cover up the malfunction of the navigation system. Next, Paul hacked the broadcaster to reduce its market value and also hush up the problems with its rocket, after all, it has been sending false reports to NASA. Realizing he has no alternative, Paul cancels the purchase of UBA (telling Alex to give the message to the Board, a typical 20th-century man).

Anyway, in just two weeks of all this fuss, life goes on. The merger of UBA and NBN will cost jobs, but that will be a topic for the following season. For now, no one really cares, not Stella or Mia (Karen Pittman), who is planning a trip with her boyfriend to Bali. We see that the investigation into Cory’s conduct is ongoing, but Bradley’s honest testimony appears to save him. She knows that not only does he genuinely love her, he’s the only person who sees her for who she is, she says. But the two didn’t have a night of love, we discovered. Yeah, Cory is disgusting, but, raised by a feminist, respectful of vulnerable women. I have my doubts about how unnecessary information like this could help him rather than prove misconduct, but The Morning Show isn’t the show for so much detail.

The “farewell” between Cory and Bradley is another Billy Crudup show. His sincere emotion in apologizing to her (without reciprocation) is one of the executive’s rare vulnerable moments. The farewell between Alex and Paul was less emotional for us. Which doesn’t mean any less inspiring. Paul begins the manipulation game, raising the possibility that things could have been different if “they had taken that helicopter anywhere else”. Here’s what we want from female storytelling, Alex’s answer is foolproof. “But we didn’t,” she brings him to the present. What’s more: in no hypothetical scenario would he stop being who he is, an example of a toxic man sold as perfect. She laments that she really wanted to find someone, a partner which is true for so many cool and intelligent women. In the last deaf attempt of men who refuse to listen to what we want, he still has the nerve to say that he could have been that companion. But he would never be trustworthy, as Alex clarifies, therefore, he would never be who she is looking for.

Alex accompanies Bradley to the FBI building so that she and her brother can turn themselves into justice. And so we say goodbye without knowing if Stella has taken on Cory’s position (it seems so) or if Alex will continue his career even though he is on the Board of the new company, without knowing what happened to Cybill, Chip, or even Cory. Chris apparently is about to leave daily journalism to return to sports coverage and it looks like we will have Alex and Laura as stars. Will they hold the season? We will have to wait until 2025 (after all, the actors are still on strike). But it was an excellent turn for The Morning Show, even at the expense of its two stars (Crudup and Reese). We will follow, of course.

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