‘Gilded Age’ Creators Dish on Bertha’s Triumph, Peggy’s Devastating Revelation in Spoiler-Filled Finale Recap

variety.com:

Brent Lang Executive Editor of Film and MediaSPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for the season finale of “The Gilded Age,” which premiered on HBO on March 21 and is now available to stream on HBO Max.At last.After all of the scheming and manipulating, the leveraging of favors and fortune, Bertha Russell has her ball.

And it’s a complete and total triumph with Mrs. Caroline Astor (Donna Murphy), the social doyenne that Bertha (Carrie Coon) has spent the bulk of “The Gilded Age’s” nine-episode season attempting to win over, not only attending, but bringing along the other members of the social hierarchy.It’s the result of a risky bet by Bertha that making Mrs.

Astor’s attendance contingent on her daughter Carrie (Amy Forsyth) being allowed to perform at the costume ball would pay off in the kind of visit that seemed so out of reach when we first met the Russells at the beginning of the show.

Old money, it seems, has yielded to new…at least for one glorious evening. But what choice did it have? As Mrs. Astor’s key gatekeeper, Ward McAllister (Nathan Lane) bluntly informs her, at some point the elites have to invite of the nouveau rich to dinner lest they decide to say forget it and form their own society.