This article contains spoilers for The Curse episode 10.
The first 25 minutes of The Curse‘s 10th and final episode are pretty much what you’d expect. The story of Asher Siegel (Nathan Fielder) and Whit Siegel (Emma Stone) begins to wind down and the husband-wife duo appears to have gotten (almost) everything they’ve ever wanted.
Their Flipanthropy renovation series, now rebranded Green Queen, has a spot on HGTV … albeit the HGTV streaming app but HGTV all the same. They get to promote their program on an episode of The Rachael Ray Show. Granted, Rachael is far more interested in her guest Vincent Pastore (of The Sopranos) and his meatball recipe but still … Rachael Ray! Whit is finally even pregnant, perpetually resting her hand on her bulging belly as if to reassure herself that the baby they tried so hard for is actually there. Baby Braxton, of course, is in the breech position in Whit’s uterus but hey … at least he’s in there!
It all seems like a perfectly imperfect ending to this voyeuristic dramedy about gentrification, insecurity, curses, and the all-consuming power of reality television. And then Asher wakes up on the ceiling.
As one might imagine, gravity no longer applying to Asher Siegel and Asher Siegel alone ends up dominating the rest of the finale’s 70-minute runtime. This isn’t just a bit of magical realism that Ash and Whit accept as a whimsical part of life. This is a terrifying paranormal phenomenon that they have to get to the bottom of. Sadly, they never do.
Even as Whit’s contractions begin, Ash can’t extricate himself from the ceiling. When Asher tries to leave the house, things don’t get any better. He flies off into a tree, grabbing a branch to stay connected to the Earth. As Whit is driven off to the hospital by their doula Moses, the fire department and Green Queen producer Dougie Schecter (Benny Safdie) arrive. Ignoring Ash’s cries for a net to be thrown over him and grounded to the firetruck, the firefighters cut him free from the branch and he jets off into the upper atmosphere, ending up in outer space where he presumably freezes to death.
So like … what? If ever there were a TV show ending that warranted an “ending explained” article, it would be this one. Unfortunately, we can’t promise you a definitive interpretation of the ending as there likely isn’t one. What we can do, however, is analyze all the possibilities of what The Curse finale is trying to communicate and we’ll do just that. What follows are some explanations of what happened to Ash from least likely to most likely.
We’ll begin with …
The Passive House Reversed the Charges of Asher’s Atoms (Or Something Similarly Science-y)
After the shock of waking up on the ceiling subsides for Asher (or at least as much as it can subside), the first theory he offers up for why he’s there has to do with the house. Though Asher and Whit have staked their entire fortune and reputations to “passive” homes that generate zero emissions and waste, it’s finally becomes clear that they really hate them. “We need to equalize the pressure, open the baby room door,” Asher yells to Whit from the ceiling.
Just the previous night, Asher and Whit installed a climate-controlled room in their home for the baby to live in safely. “Come on, summers have been crazy. We’re not going to gamble with his life,” Asher says to their contractor. Having a “normal” room inside the thermos-like home means a distinct difference in air pressure that has to be recalibrated by pushing a button before opening the door to the baby’s room.
Clearly though, air pressure is not what’s keeping Asher on the ceiling since he flies up into literally outer space upon leaving the house. This theory is the least likely option but it’s fun to consider that maybe there’s at least something vaguely scientific afoot as it relates to Asher’s relationship to the house.
The Curse Was Real
Well the name of the show is The Curse, is it not? Maybe it was Nala’s (Hikmah Warsame) curse that belatedly removed gravity from Asher’s life. After all, it appears that that first curse attempt was a successful one. Nala claims that she removed chicken from Asher’s dinner, which really did happen. And in the episodes leading up to the finale, Asher and Dougie become fixated on this and want to get to the bottom of Nala’s potential powers, even encouraging her to put a new curse on Dougie. Notably, when Asher and Whit visit Abshir’s (Barkhad Abdi) home to gift him the rights to the Questa Lane home, Nala and her sister Hani (Dahabo Ahmed) aren’t there. Maybe they’re off cooking up a fresh curse for Asher that will take effect the following morning.
There are other curses to consider too. Dougie claims that he was cursed one day, which is what led to his wife’s death in a car accident (and not his blood alcohol content). Maybe that curse has struck again and affected Dougie’s best friend, Asher. The day before Asher’s incident he and Whit chastise their employee for gifting their baby a dreamcatcher as they presumably believe it’s bad luck to receive a gift before the baby is born. Maybe they were right and it was really, really bad luck.
What happens to Asher is so blatantly supernatural that it being the product of a curse seems perfectly rational. But we don’t think it was, or at least we don’t think The Curse wants us to draw that conclusion.
It’s telling that every “curse” in The Curse is generated from a white person’s fear of a non-white person. Asher perceives Nala’s curse to be real rather than just the silly TikTok trend it likely is because Nala is African. Asher and Whit frequently “exoticize” Nala and her family, assuming that Abshir’s distaste for curses comes from primitive superstition rather than his humble Minnesota upbringing and that he’s prepping rice to eat with his hotdogs rather than buns. Similarly, Asher and Whit take the prospect of the dreamcatcher bringing bad luck for their baby extremely seriously – probably partially because it’s being given by a native of New Mexico – even though it was clearly a cheap trinket he bought at a gas station, “Made in China” sticker attached and all.
Perhaps curses are indeed real in the world of The Curse but we suspect they’re not. It’s more likely that the only curse at play is curse of whiteness.
There Is No Longer Any Gravity to Asher (Metaphorically and Therefore Literally)
So if curses aren’t real, then what actually sent Asher flying off into the sky? Honestly … beats us. We really don’t know the scientific or magical mechanism that did the trick. What we think we do know, however, is the thematic reason for Asher’s sudden weightlessness.
By the time the final episode rolls around, there is quite simply nothing left to Asher Siegel. He has always suspected that he was supremely inferior to his wife and nothing that happened in the preceding nine episodes disabused him of that notion. Dougie isn’t his friend, but his childhood bully. Test audiences hate him. He flunks even the most basic “comedy in the workplace 101” classes. The name of the show he worked so hard to produce, Green Queen, doesn’t even acknowledge his existence.
Asher isn’t fighting against these realities anymore but accepting them. The end of episode 9 even finds Asher surrendering his entire personality to better live in peace with Whit. Instead of reacting with pain and horror upon learning from Whit really thinks of him (re: he sucks) he begs for her forgiveness and cedes any remaining bit of power to her.
Literally kneeling before her, Asher begs: “There’s not some curse, I’m the problem! It’s not magic, it’s me. I’m a bad person and I’ve been dragging you down with me. I’m all in on you. I’m all in on Whitney. Whatever it takes, I’ll do it. And you won’t even have to tell me anymore because I know and I won’t be guessing. Because I know you, baby. If you didn’t want to be with me and I actually truly felt that, I’d be gone. I’d disappear. You wouldn’t have to say it. I would feel it and I would disappear.”
It seems as though that speech works in the moment. For, despite Asher’s pathetic nature being what turned Whit off in the first place, this level of nuclear patheticness and subservience might actually work for her. But can it work forever?
Probably not. Because after period of extended Asher uselessness, including giving away the Questa Lane home for free and fumbling through an analogy of how The Producers reminded Jews that the Holocaust was funny, Asher floats away. In other words: he disappears. It’s not a curse and it’s not magic but it is a promise. He promised that if Whit didn’t actually want to be with him he would know and he would be gone. So now he is.
All 10 episodes of The Curse are available to stream on Paramount+ with Showtime.
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