Spoiler Warning: Russian Doll Season 2

Created by Natasha Lyonne, Leslye Headland, and Amy Poehler, Russian Doll returned with a second season on Netflix after three years. While the first season, exploring eternal death in a time loop, left audiences hankering for more, the second season confused some as stories with time travel often tend to do. Without going into much of the technicalities, here, time travel is used as a device to delve deep into intergenerational trauma, which in turn gives the second season a fable-like charm and ambiguity.

We end up getting a deeply spiritual story, and like good art, with one of the most banger soundtracks to boot, Russian Doll, profoundly enough, moves something in you. It makes you feel connected, understood, seen, and heard, all at the same time. Watching Nadia come to terms with the inevitability of human frailty and fragility in her own mother (Chloë Sevigny), grandmother (Irén Bordán), and Ruthie (Elizabeth Ashley; Annie Murphy plays the younger version) becomes a therapeutic act for the audience.

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Time Travel as a Device to Heal Generational Trauma

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We meet Lyonne’s Nadia Vulvokov four years after the ordeal of the first season, which happened on the night of her 36th birthday. As Nadia nears her 40th birthday in season 2, she finds herself facing another paradox in the space-time continuum. This Nadia is a far more evolved one than the one we meet at the very beginning, but she is still very much unhealed.

Nadia finds a wormhole in New York City’s subway system and manages to travel to the past. As she stumbles into 1982, she finds herself occupying her mother, Lenora’s psyche, at the time when Lenora was ready to bring Nadia into the world and inflict the love and wounds we see her sifting through in season one. As the story progresses, Nadia travels further back to 1944 and becomes a spectator in the lives of her stern grandmother Vera and her inscrutable best friend, Delia.

We are often told that we would not be who we are if all the terrible, awful things that happened to us never happened to us. The fallacy of this statement, often thrown at those grappling to live with their lacerated selves, is that it is only partially true, if at all. We do not become who we are because of the bad things that happen to us.

Trauma, especially ones caused in early childhood, affects the brain in ways that can leave lasting changes in the very way we function. It effectively hampers how we grow as full, thriving human beings, once full of potential. Many would choose not to deal with their trauma when given a choice, sometimes without fully thinking through the consequences. A theme very recently dealt with in the psychological thriller series Severance created by Dan Erickson and directed by Ben Stiller and Aoife McArdle. But much like Adam Scott’s Mark from Severance, Nadia cannot escape the torment she has inherited. Our traumatised selves become fragmented, forever searching for wholeness and absolution that would never come.

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The moment Nadia gets the chance to transform her past, she takes the gamble. It takes her collapsing space-time harmony to finally come to terms with the ineffability of everything life thrusts upon us. The “many worlds,” as explained by quantum mechanics, collide as Nadia foolishly exerts her will to change the indelible past. Time is a loop, and we are all just cosmic pawns.

Epigenetics & the Surreal Magic of Chaos

This season Russian Doll leaves behind the video game narrative and forays into the purgatory-style time travel. It toes the line between science and spirituality by rummaging through epigenetics, mythos, and the surreal magic of chaos.

Much like the mythical Charon, Horse (played by Brendan Sexton III) shows up again as the homeless guy who will show you the way and save your skin by charging a pretty penny in return. One might even see Horse as a fae-like being – full of mischief, mayhem, and Delphic knowledge – holding the different timelines together but at the cost of his lucidity, reminiscent of the Yellow Card Man character in the Stephen King novel 11/22/63.

At one point, Nadia mentions epigenetics, the study of how our behaviours and environment can cause changes to our cells that affect the way our genes work without changing our DNA sequence. It might sound like one more of Nadia’s neurotic ramblings, but several studies have proven that the behaviour of our ancestors affects us. Everything from food to the smoking habits of grandfathers can cause epigenetic effects in their grandchildren. Similarly, circumstantial evidence suggests that trauma can leave a chemical mark on a person’s genes that can subsequently be passed down through generations. But that does not mean we are bound to repeat the looped sequence of pain and suffering forever.

Breaking the Cycle

Along the way, in the second season of Russian Doll, there’s a nod to the fact that it takes a village to raise a child and that blood is not the only family we get to rely on in this life. On the one hand, Nadia experiences Lenora’s horrors of living with mental illness but also witnesses the beauty of the tenderness Ruthie brings to their life. Just like Nadia and her mother had Ruthie, her grandmother Vera had Delia; similarly, Nadia has Maxine, Lizzy, and Alan.

As Ruthie tells Lenora while Nadia embodies her, “I’d rather be alive with you," the truth finally dawns on Nadia. The endearing devotion of others, their promises to witness life along with us, make life worth living. The good and the bad just make up for this human experience. In her grace, strength, and acceptance of life as it comes, Ruthie becomes the actual oracle, even though Nadia jokes about being one.

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Nadia finally lets go and bids Ruthie goodbye with this line, “You had no obligation, but you loved me anyway. Bye, Ruthie.” This is the final act that brings Nadia to break the cycle. She ends it not by rewriting the past but accepting it and adapting to it. And her healing continues.