This is full-spoiler discussion page for Amazon's The Last Tycoon, for those who've watched all nine episodes of the series. For my overall, non-spoilery thoughts, read my full The Last Tyccon review.
So this series took a pretty dark turn towards the end, didn't it? There were certainly some darker moments earlier in the series, but it wasn't until the final stretch where the show's Golden Age Hollywood veneer fell away and The Last Tycoon became full-on Great Gatsby-style tragedy.
The common thread among all the main characters is that they all achieved the professional success they were seeking but at the expense of their personal happiness. Pat Brady (Kelsey Grammer) got his Oscar, but completely torpedoed his relationship with Monroe Stahr (Matt Bomer) and his daughter Cecelia (Lilly Collins) in the process. For his part, Monroe was able to keep his magnum opus alive by putting it in the hands of another studio, but his romance with Kathleen Moore (Dominique McElligott) turned out to be a giant sham. Even smaller characters like Max Miner (Mark O'Brien) suffered a great deal in the end. Max managed to crawl his way up from poverty to a key position in the Brady American Pictures hierarchy but found himself helping his new boss cover up a murder and blackmail Stahr. With the exception of Cecelia, it doesn't really seem like anyone ended the season in a better state than they started it.
I was a bit mixed on Brady's portrayal in the last couple episodes. His decision to blackmail Monroe into remaining at BAP was certainly a dramatic twist, but also a pretty extreme and damning move for a character that we're supposed to maintain sympathy towards. The show was never very good about maintaining the balance between Brady's benevolent and ruthless sides, and I think this twist ultimately pushed him too far into the latter direction. He became an overt villain in a show that shouldn't really have any. Hell, even the Nazi film censor character came across as more sympathetic than Brady in the end.
I did generally enjoy the soap opera-esque course of the romance between Stahr and Moore, though. The idea that another fetching Irish actress would magically wander into Stahr's life and solve all his problems seemed too easy and trite from the start, but that was the point. McElligott really started to shine towards the end as her character grew more conflicted and desperate and she flawlessly switched between idealized Irish lass and straightforward Minnesota girl.
It's also interesting to note the parallels between the first and last scenes of the season, both of which revolved around Stahr contemplating the vase that serves as one of the few links to his past with the late Minna. Predictably, the season ended with Stahr finally brought low by his terminal heart condition. That ending seems designed to cap off the series on a grim note should Amazon choose not to move forward with a second season. At this point, I'm hoping that's not the case. There was too much left unresolved in the end, and death by heart failure seems like a cheap way to end Stahr's story now.
It will be interesting to see how the series moves forward from that moment if it does return, though. Will Stahr survive this incident? Will it further compel him to finish his life's work while he still has time? Can it somehow be sued to repair the shattered bonds between Stahr and his fiancee or Stahr and his business partner? Or will the series simply shift focus to another character? I mentioned in my main review how I wish the show was geared a little more towards Collins' character. Perhaps that could be true for Season 2. I'd like to see what comes next for Cecelia as she breaks away from her father and takes her passion project to a new studio. By shifting gears in that way, Season 2 might be able to address a lot of the flaws of the first.
What did you think of The Last Tycoon: Season 1? Let us know in the comments below!
Jesse is a mild-mannered writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter, or Kicksplode on MyIGN.
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