The Ending Of The English Explained

The hero of "The English" is Eli Whipp (Chaske Spencer), a Pawnee scout formerly of the U.S. Army, and a man of many contradictions. He lost everything — his family, his tribe, and his home — all due to the relentless evil of Manifest Destiny. However, he still joins up with the U.S. Army, though it's never clear whether he's conscripted or a volunteer. Even when Cornelia questions him, he gives a cryptic answer. Once a scout, Eli becomes a part of the machine that destroyed his own people. For those on the frontier, Eli Whipp is a war hero, a soldier of great reputation who even commands his fellow white officers at times.

Now that he's left the great overwhelming force that is the military, he grapples with his demoted place on the frontier and the consequences of choosing to aid the Army in its campaigns. On more than one occasion, Eli removes himself from the responsibility of a situation, claiming it's "Not my business." In a conversation with John Clarke (Gary Farmer), Eli accuses him of being nothing more than a parasite, "Sucking 'til you pop." Clarke retorts, "Says a man who got his coin from the U.S. army."

In the end, though, Eli admits his guilt in the massacre at Chalk River, acknowledging he was there and did nothing to stop it. Almost as an act of contrition, he stabs Melmont (Rafe Spell) and tells Sheriff Marshall (Stephen Rea) to arrest him, taking on full responsibility for his death.

Thomas Trafford (Tom Hughes) is an Englishman living in America and working a cattle ranch in Wyoming. At the beginning of "The English," we learn that someone has been terrorizing Trafford's livestock by gruesomely killing off pregnant cows. However, he feels he deserves this for his role in the Chalk River massacre, although he did try to prevent it as much as he could. He dies at the end by his own hand, cutting the rope his cowboys throw him when he's caught in a flood.

Unfortunately, Trafford is the one character in "The English" whose arc doesn't feel as complete as the rest. He starts out a proper villain with the violent punishment of a nightwatchman (in cricket whites, no less). Yet, his is such a startling transformation, from wealthy "Bond" villain to guilt-ridden gentle soul, that it feels as if Blick were trying to play a trick on his audience. We're presented with an obvious bad guy whose character then completely changes. Make no mistake, the reveal that Melmont is the series' true villain is brilliant. However, Trafford's arc could definitely have been executed a bit more smoothly.

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The horrifying and disgusting villain of "The English" is David Melmont, another character who comes out of left field to blow apart the audience's preconceptions of who the bad guy really is. Rafe Spall is brilliant in the role, delivering an insidious and deranged performance that's sure to stick with you long after the show ends.

This racist, misogynistic character is a bloodthirsty maniac and rapist who rips through Wyoming (and London) with threatening malice. Naturally, he becomes a wealthy businessman, building stores throughout the area. And of course, he dies at the end because "The English" is fiction, and bad guys are killed by the hero for the purposes of closure.

At the end of the series, clips play of the first Western film ever shot and acknowledgments are made of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show — all real things. A picture also flashes up of a modern supermarket called "Melmont's: Home of the homemaker." However, there is no store called Melmont's (we looked). Why include this fictional store with all these historically accurate facts? Perhaps as a nod to all the actual businesses in the world today built on exploitive practices.

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When Cornelia and Eli come upon a Mennonite wagon where the parents of an infant and a little girl have been killed, the two do everything they can to save the children. Both Eli and Cornelia are grieving parents. Cornelia holds the baby but seems uncomfortable and tries to hand the child back to Eli, who looks up at her confused. "You don't want it?" he asks, sparking a conversation between the pair where Cornelia reveals that she's been a mother, that she is still a mother, but that she can't be a mother again. Obviously, this is related to her syphilis diagnosis, as we discover later.

But Cornelia is a mother through and through. She sets off on her own to take the children back to their Mennonite relatives, risking her own safety to do so. Then she rescues White Moon (Forrest Goodluck), who she dubs "No Trouble" because that's what he is. During the showdown between Melmont, Eli, and Cornelia, she tells Melmont that she loved their son "because he breathed. Because I was his mother."

It's also worth pointing out that the ending of "The English" is resolved by two raging mothers desperate to protect and avenge their children. Indeed, in the Myers' cabin, when the two women realize they have a shared history, there's a fantastic moment of connection between them. And, of course, Touching Ground (Tonantzin Carmelo) gives her life to protect her son White Moon, another example of, as Flathead Jackson puts it, "a mother's love."

Chaske Spencer is a revelation as Eli Whipp, delivering a staggering performance that's easily deserving of an Emmy. In the role, Spencer is a classic, taciturn anti-hero. Grief and loss are bound up in his backstory, and despite his claims that he seeks neither pity nor vengeance for what happened to him, there are flashes of anger that spill out. In an interview with Bonnie Laufer, writer and director Hugo Blick revealed that he wanted to make Eli's dialogue as sparse as possible to focus on Spencer's non-verbal performance, allowing him to become "the archetype of the cinematic hero." 

For Spencer, playing Eli as a veteran was key since he's seen as a "war hero" by many of the characters in the show. In the same interview with Bonnie Laufer, he talked about preparing for the role by spending time with Vietnam and Iraq war veterans, trying to get a feel for their experiences. Spencer's angle on the character was as "an ex-Vietnam vet biker," the actor told Newsweek. "That's who he is, that's who that guy is, and even though he's from the 1800s, you can still modernize that, and it helped me out a lot."

Spencer had strong opinions about portraying a Native American character, telling Newsweek that "I don't represent all Native America, I'm just an actor [and] they're my experiences, I find that, you know, each Native American has their own different experience and I find that I have my own unique experience. I put that into Eli because I feel like I share with him, the character, being an outsider."

At the age of 18, Hugo Blick, an Englishman, was sent to Montana as a corrective — a journey to straighten his life out. While living in Montana, Blick had an experience that would later become the beginning of "The English." He told Televisual about a hunting partner he had who Blick referred to as Chief. "He wasn't a chief. He called me English. We were easy with this casual racism, but pretty soon I got to see it was a one-way street –- with all the heavy traffic heading his way. Then one day he took off. I never knew his real name, nor he mine. I regretted that."

While the beginning of "The English" might have grown from an experience Blick now views with regret, the ending of the series is all about love. It's a majestic, tragic, and tender love story about two people from completely different cultures, yet brought together by grief and loneliness. And yes, even revenge. According to Blick, "for all the guns and whistles that these kinds of genres attach, the real purpose of 'The English' is that [sic] intimate tender moments of a love affair that develops between these two characters," he said in an interview with Bonnie Laufer. It's this powerful emotional resonance that makes the ending of "The English," and the story leading up to it, so captivating to watch.