As the finale of Life After Life begins, the narrator (Lesley Manville) says Ursula thought about how much she loved her brother Teddy again and again. After the war was declared, Teddy (Sean Delaney) joined the Air Force. Ursula (Thomasin McKenzie) was grateful to be rising through the ranks of the civil service. To her, it meant she could get up every day and fight Hitler. She would never be in charge because that is for the Maurices of the world. Maurice (Harry Michell) visits her office to say he can’t meet Tedders and Jimbo tonight, but she argues that plans have been made. He also forces her to call him Mr. Todd. Ursula reminds him that this could be the last time he gets to see them.

He quickly says he doesn’t have time to gad around town with Teddy and Jimmy before storming out. Ursula meets with Teddy and Jimmy (Laurie Kynaston). They go for drinks as Ursula says she’d like to be the one to kill Hitler and thinks about it all the time. Jimmy jokes about killing him with Teddy’s help. Ursula feels like she is trapped in an endless nightmare. A drunk (Matthew Sim) offers to buy the beautiful boys a drink. Ursula asks whether they thought how one thing in the past changing could change everything else. For instance, someone could kidnap Hitler at birth and raise him in a Quaker house. Teddy asks whether she could kill a baby. Ursula says yes if it would keep him safe.

When Teddy calls the establishment depressing, Jimmy says there is a secret downstairs. He stumbles around and bumps into nearby tables while trying to lead them. They follow him and are surprised to see a crossdresser singing on the stage in front of them. Jimmy dances with a man nearby before he comes over to tell them to just enjoy it. After they leave Jimmy there, Ursula wonders if that was wise. Teddy says he seemed to be in his element. Ursula asks whether he knew Jimmy liked frequenting places like that. Jimmy says no and he doesn’t care either. He could be dead in a week so he should do what he wants.

Ursula believes Izzie would be thrilled. They hug after reaching Teddy’s destination. She asks him to fly carefully and try not to die. She yells for him when he walks off, but he is already gone. Ursula’s nightly ritual involved gathering in the basement with the other tenants of the boarding house. As she sits and listens to the bombs around her, she can’t help but think about Teddy in his plane flying over Germany. One of her neighbors lets her hold her daughter, Emile, for a minute. Another neighbor tells her she is very good with babies and shouldn’t wait much longer. A bomb crashes through the roof. A volunteer worker finds Ursula who begins asking about the baby.

The woman tells her not to worry because they will find her baby. Ursula is so glad she isn’t going to be dying alone. The woman tells her that she is going to be okay, but she needs to continue talking. Ursula tells the woman about seeing Hitler and waving at him as she suggests she should’ve stayed in Germany. She doesn’t know why they live since all they do is die. Ursula tells the woman it is kind of her to be with her and she only wants a good death. As the woman goes for help, Ursula cries that she wants her Ted. Ursula ends up dying once again. The narrator explains that Ursula worked at the Home Office by day cataloging London’s injured and dead. At night, she volunteered as an air-raid warden.

Now, the woman who was with her when she died, Mrs. Woolf (Suzanne Bertish), gives her tips for dealing with the injured. Ursula goes into a nearby house alone to see if there are any lucky ones. She finds an injured woman who begins asking about the baby. Ursula sees another body nearby as the woman says the baby’s name is Emile. She says they’re going to find him, but she needs to get her to a stretcher first. As she walks out of the room, Ursula finds the baby on the ground and steps over it carefully. She makes it outside and tells two men about the baby and the mother. Before they can go get the mother, they’re pulled away elsewhere.

Ursula finds a painting in a broken frame beneath her. The narrator says Ursula was surrounded by death, but she never wanted to live more. She takes the painting. Later, she hangs out with Fred Smith (Anders Hayward) and wishes the painting was the world. She asks whether this is the real world with bombs falling and her and him together. Fred says probably not. Then, she asks whether they’ll build a better world if they win the war like the politicians keep saying. Fred isn’t sure although he doesn’t think so, but Ursula says they have to. There wouldn’t be a point otherwise. Fred tells her not to think too hard because she’ll hurt her head. She tells him about the wine in the cellar and her wonderfully rich aunt.

They drank wine in bed. The narrator says there was no air raid siren that night when the first bombs fell so they both died instantly. Sylvie (Sian Clifford) gives birth and uses sewing scissors to cut the cord around Ursula’s neck. In this life, Ursula was regularly lost in thought and wondered about the meaning of life. It amused and impressed her parents at first until it became concerning. She tells Hugh (James McArdle) and Sylvie that she wants to study philosophy, but Sylvie doesn’t see the point. Izzie (Jessica Brown Findlay) likes the idea. Ursula wants to find the meaning of life and the purpose of life. Maurice argues that the meaning of her life is to have a baby and that is what she’ll end up doing. When he says he doesn’t know why Oxford should waste a degree on her, Ursula tells him that he repels her.

Hugh says he happens to know the meaning of life if anyone is interested. He urges them to take care of each other. Outside, Izzie tells Ursula she envies her for getting to go to university. Ursula admires her since she makes her own money and drives her own car. Izzie encourages her to study whatever she wants to study. She urges her to give it her all before calling her clever and pretty. Izzie believes she could do great things. Ursula spent the summer in Germany because she was drawn to the country for some reason. She didn’t understand the admiration her female friends had for the Austrian. She fell in with an intellectual crowd that agreed Hitler was tremendously flawed. The only question was when and how he might be deposed.

Jurgen (Louis Hoffman) claims they had to make Hitler leave the restaurant because he smelled bad. He doesn’t think he will be a man who can retain power for long. A clever and ambitious lawyer named Jurgen had fallen in love with Ursula. They were married within a year so her plans for a future took a different turn. Sylvie meets with them at the hospital after Ursula has her baby, Freida. Later, Ursula tells Frieda to slow down although Pamela (Patsy Ferran) says she just having fun. Ursula explains that she has weak lungs so has to be careful. Pamela asks whether she speaks up when people in Germany say things against the Jews. Ursula insists people she knows don’t talk that way.

Pamela questions whether she does anything when she sees the windows of Jew-owned stores shattered. Ursula asks what she is supposed to do and whether she should get into a fist fight. Ursula says no and she wouldn’t either, but Pamela says she wouldn’t live there. Sylvie tells them not to argue since Ursula is only here for a week. They wish Jurgen could’ve come, but the party keeps him very busy. Ursula confesses he had to join the Nazi party to work and they need people in the party with cooler heads. Once Ursula goes outside, Sylvie tells Hugh she doesn’t know how receptive she’ll be to the conversation. Hugh is adamant that they still have to have it though.

In private, Sylvie tells her that everyone is worried about her. She asks whether there is any way for all of them to come to Fox Corner if there is going to be a war. Maurice could find work for Jurgen, but Ursula doesn’t think he’d go for that. Hugh says it can be just her and Frieda then. Ursula wants to see how things develop since Jurgen is confident that there won’t be a war. Sylvie says Maurice is too. Hugh urges her to pay close attention because she’ll have to get out before the borders close. As they head back to the train station, Sylvie says she’ll come visit in a few months.

On the day war was declared, Ursula ran to the British embassy dragging Frieda by the hand. The gates were padlocks and there were no lights on in the building. She was told that they were already gone. Jurgen died in a bombing raid in ’44. Later that year, Teddy was shot down over Berlin. As they walk through the bombed city, Frieda (Evie Templeton) asks why there is a peacock there. Ursula says the British bombed the Zoo so many of the animals escaped. Although their stomachs were empty, Ursula was astonished every day that they were still alive. A stranger tells them the baker has no bread and there is nothing to buy anywhere.

If Frieda hadn’t been sick, they might’ve joined the exodus of people heading west away from the Russians. She would never survive such a journey. As they sit down, they hear air raid sirens. Ursula tells her daughter to get up because they have to keep moving. She approaches a pharmacist (Martin Oelbermann) to see if he has any food, but he does not. Ursula has heard he sells something for people who want to stop suffering and it is supposedly like going to sleep. She asks for two. Her daughter is starving and can barely breathe in this dust. Ursula is also worried about the Russians and what they’ll do once they arrive. She sees what is coming and would prefer her daughter to die easily. Once he gives her some, she tells him she doesn’t have any money. He already knows.

Then, they walk into the woods and lay on the ground as Ursula remembers she was going to tell Frieda about the chickens. Her grandmother got chickens during the last war because they were worried about food. Even after the war, Sylvie kept the chickens. Ursula thinks it was because she had fallen in love with them. One day, Teddy and Jimmy opened the chicken coop when they weren’t supposed to because they wanted to surprise everyone with a chicken parade. Ursula gives her daughter the medicine she received from the pharmacist as they hear bombs around them before taking one herself. As Ursula drifted to sleep, she had the terrible sense that she had forgotten to do something.

She tried to remember why she had come to Germany in the first place. When she was reborn, they begin using the word fragile to describe her. When she begins crying and admits she doesn’t know what is wrong, Izzie suggests it could be melancholia. Teddy goes off to war again. When Maurice comes into her office to tell her about Teddy, she begins yelling and asking him not to do this. He admits it is tough and the war is very evil. As she leaves for the day, she runs into Derek Oliphant (Joshua Hill) on the street. He offers to help her, but she begins screaming and breaking down. Dr. Kellet (John Hodgkinson) finds her sitting alone a bit later and approaches her.

He says Hugh hunted him down because he thought she might enjoy a visit. The doctor remembers that Ursula thought she had been here before. When she asks if he believes her, he says anything is possible. That is what gives him hope. Dr. Kellet knows about Teddy. Ursula says she didn’t misplace him. Instead, he was murdered by some other poor chap in a killing machine. Dr. Kellet lost his son in the war, but he feels like he misplaced him and could show up again any minute. He admits that his son was killed as Ursula said. After she asks how he goes on, Kellet says “amor fati” or a love of fate. It means simple acceptance of what comes to us regarding it as neither nor good.

He tells her to become who you are. Kellet explains that Nietzsche got it from Pindar who put it better. Become such as you are having learned what that is. Ursula believes she became a corpse among corpses. If she had been here before and will be coming again, she will do so much better next time. She just keeps hoping she could remember. If she could just get to Munich soon enough, she could’ve changed everything. Kellet isn’t sure that is possible because the world is the world. Ursula confesses she hates it here and misses her brother.

Kellet misses his son, but they have no choice. Ursula tells him that he doesn’t have a choice. Later that night, Ursula tells Teddy she is coming as she leaps from the window. She begins learning how to shoot and gets significantly better. In Germany, she runs into Jurgen, but they don’t seem to recognize one another. She asks if he is here because she wants to get his autograph. She walks over to Hitler and shoots him. She is killed as a result. Ursula is reborn. Sylvie tells Dr. Kellet about her feeling like she has been here before. He suggests she might have been since her reality is her reality. He is glad to see Ursula drawing a snake in its mouth because it is a symbol representing the circularity of the universe.

He explains it to her and insists there is only the now, but Sylvie only wants her to be happy. When Sylvie says she seems to find the world a frightening place, Kellet insists that it is a frightening place. He says “amor fati”. She gets older as Teddy asks about the possibility of coming back and living again. Before Teddy leaves for the war, Ursula stops him this time to tell him that she loves him. He turns around and thanks her before leaving. Maurice visits her office to tell her about Teddy. Later, the family gathers. Izzie asks why everyone is so quiet since this is a party. Sylvie worries she might have to lie down. Ursula tells them how Teddy used to say it’d be great if they could do it all over again. Sylvia says they couldn’t pay her to do this again, but Pamela would.

Pamela tells her mother everything she has and Jimmy is coming home. It is Hugh’s birthday and he is considered very elderly now so he is asked whether he’d do it again. He would do it all again just to see Ursula take her first steps. When Pamela complains about not being the favorite, Hugh says he’d do it again to see Pamela beat Maurice at tennis for the first time. They laugh at Maurice’s reaction before Izzie says she’d return in many guises and be a spy. She’d also be an ardent lover of an entrapped Bulgarian princess. Once Ursula is asked whether she would, she reveals she told Teddy she would and that it would be wonderful. As Hugh walks Ursula away from the house, he asks if she has any inside information about when the war might be over.

She says by Christmas. When she is asked whether they’re winning, Ursula says we choose to believe we are. He offers to let her stay at Fox Corner since London is so dangerous now. Hugh tells her about a chap in the trenches who lit a match. A German sniper shot his head clean off. Hugh took from it that you must keep your head below the parapet and your light beneath the bushel. He confesses she’d rather Ursula be a coward than dead because he couldn’t bear it if anything happened to her. Ursula says he never talks about the war, what he did, or what he saw. He saw everything every soldier sees, God, the devil, death everywhere, and an extraordinary amount of human kindness. Ursula rides away on the train as the episode ends.

 

Life After Life Review

While it feels like Life After Life never reached a jaw-dropping climax, the series was still very enjoyable thanks to its bleak mood, good casting, and deep stories. The mood was set exceptionally well to the point that viewers can feel the hopelessness of certain scenes. As a result, this likely isn’t for everyone since many people prefer cheerful dramas.

The cast was great from start to finish with a few standing out and a few I would’ve liked to have seen more from. There is likely a deeper meaning to many of the scenes that completely flew over my head and I suspect many viewers will feel this way. Regardless, Life After Life was an intriguing, refreshing period drama that many will enjoy. The finale scores a 7 out of 10. Recaps of Life After Life are available on Reel Mockery here. Find out how to support our work at this link.