‘Russian Doll’ Star Natasha Lyonne on Season 2’s Nadia-Nora Twist, Exploring the Future in a Season 3

variety.com:

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterSPOLER ALERT: Do not read if you have not yet watched “Matryoshka,” the Season 2 finale episode of “Russian Doll.”In Season 2, “Russian Doll” broke out of its first season’s “Groundhog Day”-style time-loop format with a “Quantum Leap”-like time-travel device that allowed Nadia (Natasha Lyonne) and Alan (Charlie Barnett) to jump into the bodies of their deceased loved ones by taking a trip on the New York City subway.

Nadia becomes her mother, Lenora “Nora” (Chloë Sevigny), in the East Village in 1982, and grandmother Vera (Irén Bordán, younger version Ilona McCrea), in World War II-era Budapest, while Alan is inhabiting his grandmother Agnes (Carolyn Michelle Smith) in Germany during the Cold War in 1944.

The time travel allows them both to explore the pasts that had shaped them long before they were born. Nadia specifically makes multiple futile attempts to change the course of history for her mother and, therefore, herself, all while avoiding the present day where her surrogate mother Ruth (Elizabeth Ashley) is dying and Nadia’s friends Maxine (Greta Lee) and Lizzy (Rebecca Henderson) are trying to keep her focused on that, in favor of a past where Young Ruth (Annie Murphy) is alive and well.All of this culminates in Nadia giving birth to herself and taking the baby to the present to try to raise her better than Nadia was raised by Nora.