After eight episodes of doubt, paranoia, self mutilation and a spot of fatal hemorrhaging, Netflix’s darkly humorous takedown of romance reaches its climax with the must-see wedding of the year. We’ve been through an awful lot to get here and as the various directors have taken us through various nightmare scenarios to get us to this point, it falls to Weronika Tofilska to bring everything together to send us out on a high.
But how will it all end? With wedding bells, vows and a final goodbye as the happy couple head off on a well deserved honeymoon? Or will disaster strike and cause blood to flow more freely than the wine thanks clicking in the glasses of over a hundred guests?
There’s only one way to find out, so you’re cordially invited to the nuptials of Mr. & Mrs. Nicky Cunningham; a wedding so important, it’ll help weed out any true soulmates in the building or your money back. Something very bad is truly going to happen, but it’s going to very messy too – both emotionally and physically…
It’s time. We’re finally at the alter and despite all the craziness that occurred over the last few days, Rachel Harkin is walking down the aisle in defiance of the curse that’s plagued her bloodline and claimed the life of her newly wed mother. After spending the previous hour scrambling about to put together a potion that’ll make her Nicky’s soulmate that required her – among other things – to amputate a pinky toe, Rachel has opted to go back to her original way of thinking and believe that Nicky and her are just fine as they are.
Despite her 98% certainty, it’s still a Hell of a risk – if she refuses to marry the curse leaps over to the Cunninghams, but if she ties the knot and is wrong about the soulmate status, she’ll quickly hemorrhage to death. Regardless of what ultimately happens, she only has until sundown to do it, but as she reads her vows with certainty, Nicky’s about to pull an uno reverse card that’ll fuck everything up.
After a week that’s seen the worship of his parent’s marriage collide with reality, he suddenly chooses not to marry Rachel, citing that they need to cast off the pressure of marriage in order to preserve what they had before. While this might have been a thoughtful thing to do before he actually proposed, Rachel now finds that she’s in great danger as her previous certainty collapses faster than a wonky tiered wedding cake. As the deadline approaches and the spirit of death itself weaves through the guests, a brutally honest argument between the bride and groom allows them to vent every grievance they’ve ever had. But what now? If they marry Rachel will almost certainly die, but if they do nothing, the curse will leap to a bloodline full of unhappy marriages and start retroactively pulping blood vessels.
I thought I was fairly certain that I’d figured out what was going to occur as Something Very Bad Is Going To Happen worked it’s way through it’s final episode, but while I was on the money for some of it, the fact that it got itself there in ways I didn’t see coming is proof that “I Do” certainly has the goods. We waste no time whatsoever as we start the finale with Rachel heading down the aisle toward her fate, it seems that she’s convinced that she has matters well in hand. Opting out of drinking her blood/hair/semen/toe cocktail and possibly changing her entire personality, she instead reverts back to positive thinking and self belief, convinced that if she feeds back into the feelings she had before all this started, everything will be fine. Obviously, this gives Jules and Nell a moment of pause as the future of their very bloodline hangs in the balance of what occurs in the next hour. But while Rachel has finally put her mind at ease, a massive curve ball is about to throw the ballgame.
In a misguided attempt to break free of the expectations his sheltered upbringing has placed on marriage, Nicky suddenly pulls a 180⁰ turn and demands that the wedding be scrapped in order to take them back to simpler times. From here the episode furiously keeps you guessing as a panicked discussion breaks down into a full argument that essentially strips what’s left of their relationship down to the bone.
It’s here that SVBIGTH dives the deepest into its themes and after episodes of curses, weirdos lurking in the wood and the threat of cult sacrifice, the real thing to fear here is the existential disaster of marrying the wrong person. Sure, Nicky’s nice and all, but it ultimately all turns out to be surface level stuff when he reveals that he never actually believed in the curse even though it was incredibly important to Rachel. It’s this fundamental disconnect which causes everything that follows to occur and it’s here where something very bad finally happens. Done with everything, Rachel allows the deadline to pass only to find that the spirit of death that’s been buzzing around the celebration retroactively starts targeting everyone in the Cunningham family who is not with a soulmate – which proves to be roughly 90% of the congregation.
Blood flows everywhere, panic reigns, but even throughout the bloodbath, some wonderfully touching things occur. While Victoria is the first to succumb, Rachel’s earlier accusations that she and Boris were a union of a narcissist and a man in awe of her are proven correct when she dies and he doesn’t. Similarly, neither Jules and Nell are affected which brings them no end of puzzlement when this terrible occurance delivers proof that they are, in fact, soul mates. However, despite trying to wash her hands of everything, the Cunninghams wed her to Nicky anyway in an attempt to halt the curse, however, while Nicky survives (not surprising as he seems to retrofit to anyone he dates), Rachel ultimately falls to the curse, bleeding to death in the snow in the atrium.
However, this isn’t the end. While I didn’t exactly pick up why it happens, Death seemingly releases the Witness from his pledge and finally allows him to die by making Rachel his successor. This delivers something of a bittersweet ending to the whole affair as Rachel will be allowed to reinvent herself as someone hopefully not as anxious as she once was (what’s there for her to be afraid of now, she’s immortal) and a final chat with young Jude suggests that she will be a far more helpful Witness than her predecessor was. Through it all, director Tofilska shifts gears impressively, moving from shock twists, to searing scenes of dialogue, to staging a mass hemorrhaging that literally coats the floors with blood – but while something bad genuinely did happen, a final, overriding sense of hope prevails despite the majority of the guests catching something far more horrific than the bouquet.
Treading the line capably between social satire and epic levels of bloodletting, Something Very Bad Is Going To Happen ends in a style that’s every bit as thoughtful as it is darkly funny. Yes, something very bad did actually happen, but when rating the show in its entirety, something pretty good happened too – a real quality experience.
So did I enjoy the show? Well, will I bleed to death if I say “I do”?
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