‘Full Circle’ Episode 6 Recap: End of the Line

If I were to find fault with Full Circle, it would be with how it didn’t quite live up to its title. Oh sure, Ed Solomon and Steven Soderbergh showed us the final fates of everyone involved — “final” in the sense that ambiguity can be final too, in some cases. But the show achieved liftoff with that magnificent second-episode kidnapping/ritual/heist/payoff sequence, so I expected symmetry in that regard, in the form of one last big setpiece that brings everyone together and keeps those of watching on the edges of our respective seats. But instead of thrilling, we got a finale that was satisfying. Which, I suppose, is plenty, or which will at any rate have to do.

In all honesty, everything wraps up with surprising swiftness and neatness. The interagency task force raids Mrs. Mahabir’s big ritual sitdown with all her minions, netting virtually all the big fish. Mahabir later finds out while in custody that her beloved nephew Aked has been murdered. Her dreams of empire are well and truly kaput.

But since he already had one foot out the door, her right-hand man Garmen Hari escapes, with his reluctant sidekick Xavier in tow, killing that poor asshole Manny Broward in the process. It’s Xavier’s job to lure his friends Louis and Natalia to the getaway plane with an expensive painting stolen from Sam and Derek’s apartment, which Sam winds up letting Louis take with no pushback once she finds out that he tried to save her son. Once they arrive at the plane, however, they are to be killed, since there was no room for them to begin with.

But Xavier does the right thing in the end, or at least the right thing for a crime thriller. As Garmen sets out to kill his friends for him, Xavier hacks him to death with a machete and rushes his friends to the plane in place of not just Garmen but himself. They fly back to Guyana without him, leaving him in limbo. 

Sam forgives Derek, meets Charisse, has a fight with her parents, welcomes her son Jared home, has several conversations with Mel about how the Class A investors from the Guyana real-estate scam years back are basically a roster of human traffickers and gangsters who could be rolled up if Sam produces that evidence. To do so, she turns to her Uncle Gene, who it turns out has forgiven her for ratting him out since she was young and afraid. He ponies up the info, which Sam tells Mel (if not in so many words) that she’s prepared to go to prison over in order to help stop more Mrs. Mahabirs. For Mel’s part, she’s not sure what to do with her life now that she’s suspended from all law enforcement for a year. 

And in the end, a miserable and destitute Louis and Natalia stagger back to their old home: the ruinous Colony at Essequibo that was the root of all the troubles, when politician Manuel Mahabir had a fellow named Clarence’s grandson killed in a park at 1:11am in order to force him off the land so the condos could be built. Get it now?

So yeah, I do wish the show had packed one last knockout punch to rival what it pulled off in that white-knuckle second episode. The Garmen chase has its moments — Manny struggling to climb a chest-high chain-link fence, Manny’s murder, Garmen and Xavier’s escape through an old Prohibition tunnel (!), the final ruse by which Xavier gets the best of Garmen once and for all — but it pales in comparison to that phone-battery-dying, chalk-circle-making, accupuncture-mannequin-substituting race against the clock.

But the episode does still have much to recommend it. The acting remains superb and understated across the board, with many marvelous little moments: Chef Jeff’s absent-minded-professor calls for help when Clarence seizes up after hearing his grand plan went wrong, Jeff and Kristin’s indignation upon being asked to leave Sam and Derek’s apartment, Derek’s visible disbelief that anything could break his way, Louis and Natalia’s desperation giving way to despair, the flatness in Xavier as he sacrifices what’s left of his life for his friends, Mrs. Mahabir’s shock to learn that her safety ritual led directly to the death of her final surviving family member, Mel looking like a balloon with the air let out now that she can no longer channel her mental illness into surprisingly good and dogged police work, the beautifully filmed moments in the park where Sam sits and contemplates what to do where she’s made to look as if she’s a ghost haunting herself. Dennis Quaid, CCH Pounder, Claire Danes, Timothy Olyphant, Zazie Beetz, Sheyi Cole, Adia, Gerald Jones, Suzanne Savoy — killers one and all. 

I’ve often said that all I’m looking for when I go to the theater is “a fun time at the movies,” and the same can be said of television. Transcendent experiences are nice, but being solidly entertained by serious people at the top of their craft for six episodes is, as I said above, plenty. It’s a circle I don’t mind standing in.

(This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the series being covered here wouldn’t exist.)

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.