*Warning! Spoilers ahead for Dead Ringers episode 6*
This past weekend saw the release of Dead Ringers in its entirety. The six-part series tells the tale of the brilliant but troubled twins Beverly and Elliot Mantle.
In this updated version of David Cronenberg’s 1988 thriller starring Jeremy Irons, Rachel Weisz plays the main character.
The sisters are completely unrepentant in their intention to do whatever it takes to achieve their aims of questioning outmoded practises and advancing women’s health care. They share everything, even drugs and partners.
But in doing so, they go beyond what is ethically acceptable in medicine.
But when the twins agree that one of them must die, everything comes to a head.
Elliot has grown more envious of Beverly as her sister drifts away while Beverly has fallen in love and started seeing Genevieve (Britne Oldford).
Her twin has also openly distanced herself from her as she is under increasing pressure as a result of an article outlining her murky practises, which involve major felonies.
In the conclusion, a very pregnant Beverly answers a call from her sister and then goes to see her at their opulent birthing facility.
Eliott declares that she cannot live without her sister, but Beverly, who appears to have it everything, feels slightly dejected and admits that she has never truly been content with life.
The plot ends in death, just as in the movie.
But this time, instead of dying together, the twins choose to assume different identities.
‘They have to climb inside you now,’ Beverly says of her unborn babies to her sister.
‘There was only ever supposed to be one of us. You always were a better me,’ she adds.
After then, the scene cuts to Elliot giving Beverly anaesthesia as she is laying on an exam table.
After cutting the babies out of her sister’s tummy while Beverly bleeds out, she sews up her own belly to make it look like she had a caesarean section.
It becomes evident that Elliot has assumed her sister’s identity when Genevieve subsequently departs for New York after finishing an acting gig.
The actors and crew were aware from the beginning that they were working towards an explosive ending sequence, according to scriptwriter Alice Birch, who has previously worked on Conversations with Friends, Normal People, Succession, The Wonder, and The Wonder.
‘The ending and final twin swap was always where I thought I wanted to end it and it was all about navigating how we got there,’ she told Metro.co.uk.
‘It was heightened and operatic and gory and messy.’
She added it was the ‘saddest and most intense feeling’ telling this shocking part of the story.
‘We wanted them to be the most extraordinary women you’d never met- we wanted them to be the most ambitious, top of their field and to kind of make their dreams briefly come true,’ she said.
A big portion of the process of putting together the series involves extensive study, as well as having specialists on hand during the writing and production of the series.
‘It was really necessary, and we had them before and during the writer’s room- midwives, obstetricians, endocrinologists and gynecologists’,’ she explained.
Several specialists were on set every time there was a birth or a medical procedure because, as Birch put it, ‘it was very crucial we got that correct.’
An all-female writing area spurred many discussions about topics ranging from fertility and birth to miscarriage and abortion.
‘Throughout the writing process people were bringing in research and stories and feedback and it was shocking because we don’t talk about it as much as we should and often women’s health is underfunded or under researched and the maternal mortality rate is still so high,’ she explained.
However, Birch said she felt they had ‘only just scratched the surface’ because there were ‘so many patients we couldn’t bring into the show that we really wanted to’.
Beverly disembowelled Elliot in a drug-induced coma in the erroneous aim of’separating the Siamese twins,’ before passing died the next day from drug withdrawal in the arms of his dead twin.
The TV show, directed by Sean Durkin, Lauren Wolkstein, and Karyn Kusama, starring Michael Chernus, Poppy Liu, Jeremy Shamos, Jennifer Ehle, and Emily Meade, among others.
Dead Ringers is now streaming on Prime Video.