Diksha Sundriyal
The second season of Hulu’s ‘Nine Perfect Strangers‘ delivers an explosive finale where Masha’s true plans for her guests finally come to light. She had enticed all of them to Zauberwald with the promise of healing them of their respective traumas through her radical new therapy with drugs. By the end, however, it becomes clear that not only are her methods more unorthodox than expected, but she also has a personal stake in this whole situation. All the tension in the retreat and between the characters finally explodes in the eighth episode, and Masha feels the direct brunt of it. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Masha Suffers the Impact of Martin’s Fury
In the final episode, Masha puts David Sharpe on trial, where she reveals how each guest is connected to him and has been impacted by his actions. While this goes on inside the main hall, Martin is in his lab, losing his mind. Since the beginning of the season, he has been at odds with Masha because he is skeptical about her methods, but he also resents her for becoming the head of Zauberwald. The retreat has been in his family for generations, but when the time comes, his mother, Helena, chose to give the reins of the place to Masha, a woman she met years ago for a brief time, instead of her own son.
As if this weren’t enough, Martin discovers that Masha is planning to sell the place to David, who wants to invest in it because he thinks that Masha’s drug therapy can break barriers and make him more money than initially imagined. The fact that his family’s legacy is going to be sold away by a woman who isn’t even related to them makes him furious. Feeling dejected, he tries to find some comfort in the very drugs that he helped develop. He consumes more than the suggested quantity, which leads him to hallucinate his mother. When Helena comes to him, it is the version that pushes him to make his move for the place.
The ghost of his mother encourages him to seek out the man trying to destroy his family’s legacy by buying it off. He marches back into the building and comes out with a gun. By this time, David has been confronted by the rest of the guests, and he promises them that he will pull out of the weapons business. To ensure that he is not going to change his mind, he decides to send the message at that moment using a satellite phone. High on drugs himself, he goes out into the dark and cold night, completely unaware that Masha and Martin have followed him.
Martin’s Bullet Was Not Meant for Masha
While Masha tries to bring David back into the house, Martin comes after him with a gun. Their paths intersect at the bridge, where David ends up after he gets lost. Masha tries to convince him to come back inside, which is when Martin shows up. He is angry with David, but at the same time, his resentment for Masha is also at its peak. When she tries to calm him down, all he hears is his mother’s words, and this makes him even more frustrated. There comes a point when Masha and Helena become the same person to him, and in his anger, he shoots.
The bullet hits Masha in the chest, and the shock and impact of the hit force her to fall down from the bridge. The realisation of what he has done pulls Martin out of his mindless state, and David, too, sobers up from all the drugs that he was on. For a moment, it seems that this is the end for Masha. As if to welcome her to the other side, her daughter, Tatiana, shows up. However, instead of leaving with her, Masha bids her goodbye, telling her child that she needs to let go of her now. This shows that Masha has finally started to find a way out of her own trauma. Though she will always miss her daughter, she knows that her life and work must go on.
With this thought, Masha pulls her away from death, and the next morning, it is revealed that her injuries were not as serious as they seemed. It turns out that Martin is a bad shot and his bullet did not hit any crucial part of Masha’s body. She will recover from the bullet. As for her fall from the bridge, the snow cushioned her, and while she has a few broken bones, it’s was not serious enough to kill her. Sure enough, Masha is out and about again soon, and she also forgives Martin, because she knows he didn’t really mean to kill her. He was just processing his own trauma.
Read More: Nine Perfect Strangers: Is Helena Dead? Was Masha Hallucinating Her?
