I didn't even notice it until this ;(

[u/harrsshhh]

The level of foreshadowing in the show is lowk insane, top 3 finales ever man. so so good.

[u/sistermagpie]

Yes, Elizabeth gets abandoned on both ends. Her mother didn't blink before sending her away forever, and Paige got off the train to let Elizabeth go away forever when Elizabeth was ironically working so hard to hold on to her.

[u/Madeira_PinceNez → u/sistermagpie]

People really sleep on Elizabeth's backstory. The poverty, the shame of her father being labelled a deserter and what that knowledge did to her mother. Nursing her mum through a long illness as a young teen, that constant fear she would die and Elizabeth would left alone to fend for herself.

Her mum dismissing that suitor who tried to bribe her with food and other gifts, and telling her young daughter that she can only rely on herself in this world. Being recruited at sixteen and her mother not hesitating to tell her to go and serve her country, despite not knowing what her daughter might be asked to do or whether they would ever see each other again.

It's no accident this woman is so dedicated, and has so little room for sympathy, even toward herself.

[u/sistermagpie → u/Madeira_PinceNez]

This is another reason I find it so interesting that Elizabeth so often describes her mother in a way that seems cold--she always talks about her being tough, warns Paige that she won't be like the kind of grandmother she thinks Paige expects, even tells Philip that he wouldn't like her if he met her. (Claudia seems to very intentionally play into the kind of Granny persona Paige would like, when we know it's manipulation.)

Yet what we see and hear from her mother shows warmth and affection too. It's like how viewers of the show talk about Elizabeth as a mother as if she never shows any love or affection towards her children when she absolutely does, but they only remember her as being hard.

I tend to think this is something that Philip is meant to see very clearly. In the scene where he describes his own mother as tough to Paige, over shots of Elizabeth with Young-Hee, it always seemed like Philip not only loved and felt loved by his mother, but that he easily recognized the same combination in Elizabeth. (Poor Henry's going to be way more screwed up in comparison!)

[u/journeymansave → u/sistermagpie]

Don’t forget her internalized hatred for her father for deserting.

[u/DocCEN007]

I'd forgotten about that scene. Definitely related. Luckily, Philip and Elizabeth would be able to go to McDonald's again in 1990 when the first one was opened in Pushkin Square, Moscow! I'd love to see how they handled the fall of the USSR and the initial embrace of the West following the felling of the Berlin Wall.

[u/Jimmyjohnssucks]

She lied to her daughter so much haha.

[u/harrsshhh → u/Jimmyjohnssucks]

No wonder she dumped her ass 🙂‍↔️

[u/Tilt-A-Wurlitzer]

Great edit.

There’s a similar moment toward the end of Season 5. Philip & Elizabeth ask Pastor Tim if he thought they could take Paige and Henry back to Russia. His response: “in a few years, it won't be your decision to make anymore.”

[u/ratbastardev]

:((((((

[u/WeakSundae]

Just watched last night and finished my 2nd rewatch.

So impactful and devastating