The Sympathizer has always shown the audience where it would end. Or, at the very least, where the Captain would stop using the past tense. In The Sympathizer Episode 7, “Endings Are Hard, Aren’t They,” the audience sees a culmination of every single choice that the Captain (Hoa Xuande) has made. Every decision and the guilt they are smothered in.
The last episode ended with the Captain and Bon (Fred Nguyen Khan) heading back to Vietnam as a part of a mission—the ghosts of The Major (Phan Gia Nhat Linh) and Sonny (Alan Trong) riding right behind them. The Sympathizer Episode 7 has a standard opening section. Before sending them to Vietnam, Claude treats the squad to a night out in Thailand and reveals some terrifying intelligence to the Captain. Claude knows everything.
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But the mission itself goes to absolute hell. With everyone but Bon and the Captain killed, the duo are taken to a reeducation camp where we find out the circumstances of their detention and understand how much time has passed in general. We see the cascading effects of PTSD in both men but in different ways.
With Claude aware of the Captain’s duplicity and being forced to recount how he has followed orders from the CIA, which then impacted his comrades, the Captain has neither of his two worlds. The Captain is without a home in every sense of the word. Thinking in English, he’s denied acceptance by his comrades for not being Vietnamese enough or believing in the communist cause enough. However, the introduction to his “reeducation” and his resiliency in it, as well as his conversation with Claude, are all the least interesting parts of The Sympathizer Episode 7.
The back half of The Sympathizer Episode 7 is emotionally eviscerating. It’s all too much to watch at times, particularly when the Captain’s guilt rises higher and higher, and he contextualizes scenes he had washed of their true torment. While it may be Man (Duy Nguyen), the brother who should be protecting him, hurting him, it’s how the Captain’s guilt manifests that takes him to a breaking point.
Over the course of the season, we have seen the Captain become more vulnerable. He has questioned himself and his mission endlessly over the last four episodes. But now, the extent of his sins expands beyond the two assassinations he was involved in. It’s about the torture he put others through. It’s about what he let men do to the woman he captured at the beginning of the limited series.
The Captain’s conscience begins to exert a level of torment that almost feels insurmountable. The Sympathizer Episode 7 is heavy with pain, and as the Captain endures it, it becomes too much to watch. Especially when the film that he consulted on begins to play and the real-life moments begin to bubble up to the surface.
As a singular episode, The Sympathizer Episode 7 is all over the place, with large changes in the presentation of the Captain’s perspective morphing too often. However, when seen in line with the rest of the HBO limited series? This is a finale that packs a punch that stings after the credits begin. At times, The Sympathizer finale may be too much. But it’s also expertly crafted, never to lose what came before it.
There is depressingly dark humor and gut-wrenching decisions. Ultimately, The Sympathizer Episode 7 makes Park Chan-wook‘s foray into American television an absolute showstopper. There is no one that writer-director Park and writer Don McKellar don’t skewer—in line with Viet Thanh Nguyen’s original novel on which the series is based. If you contribute to war and the military-industrial complex, you are fair game. But The Sympathizer is also nuanced and never looks to flatten everything into one view. Instead, it maps out the contradictions, the beliefs, and the pain that swirls into the grey space of it all.
The Sympathizer Episode 7 is streaming now on MAX (formerly HBO MAX).
