‘The Gilded Age’ Stars Break Down Another Shocking Episode — Is [Spoiler] Dead?

[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for The Gilded Age Season 3 Episode 7, “Ex-Communicated.”]

The Gilded Age wasn’t kidding about ramping up the stakes in Season 3. After a character was killed off last week, the penultimate episode of the season left off on another potentially deadly note, leaving the fates of one of the main characters in the balance as we head into the Season 3 finale. Thankfully, The Gilded Age has already been renewed for Season 4 at HBO, so whatever changes await in the finale will be addressed in time. Here, the stars of The Gilded Age break down the pivotal Season 3 Episode 7.

Agnes & Ada’s feelings about Oscar’s big reveal

Oscar (Blake Ritson) was hiding his grief for John Adams (Claybourne Elder) from his family for much of the episode. While mother Agnes (Christine Baranski) was concerned for her son following John’s death, as were Aunt Ada (Cynthia Nixon) and cousin Marian (Louisa Jacobson), Oscar felt they could never truly understand the depths of his grief due to his fear of coming out to them. But a meeting with John’s sister, Nancy Adams Bell (Broadway’s Kate Baldwin), after the funeral revealed that she knew about their romance and supported it, and she revealed that John left Oscar a cottage as a token of his love. This caused Oscar to have a breakdown in front of his family, saying that he should’ve been sitting at the front of the ceremony like a spouse would, not in the back hiding in shame. Agnes could hardly look at him.

Christine Baranski tells TV Insider that Agnes completely understood that Oscar was revealing he was gay in that moment, and she was in “total denial” of it.

“I’m of course furious with him for losing all our money” in Season 3, Baranski says, speaking like she is Agnes. “I’ve always considered Oscar irresponsible and hapless, and when are you going to get serious about finding a wife? There are all these issues. I think that that seminal scene where he comes back [from meeting Nancy] and you can see the emotion that he feels losing his friend is breathtaking in what is not spoken. And if there’s an acknowledgment, we just go back to reading and sewing.”

“We don’t even check in with each other,” Cynthia Nixon adds in their joint interview. As Baranski says, “It says a lot about the society in which [they] lived that they can’t even talk about that.”

Thankfully, Marian could. She checked on Oscar and said that while she might be “puzzled” by who he loves, she’s not blind to the fact that men do fall in love. She accepted him and loved him, and Oscar broke down crying over the support.

Are Larry Russell and Marian Brook done for good?

Karolina Wojtasik/HBO

Marian had less kind words for fiancé Larry Russell (Harry Richardson) upon his return from Arizona. He got home to find her breakup letter, written after she found out that he went to a “house of ill repute” the night they got engaged. Marian dug her heels into her decision to call off the wedding when she finally spoke to Larry in person. The heartbroken Larry apologized for lying about his whereabouts, but it wasn’t enough.

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As Jack (Ben Ahlers) assured her later on in the episode, Larry was with Jack all night and didn’t go off with any women at the club. But Marian is still as stubborn and scared as ever that a third engagement will bring more harm to her life and reputation. She may be overreacting, but she feels trust is broken regardless. Can Larry and Marian overcome this hurdle and reunite in The Gilded Age Season 3 finale?

“I think everything can be overcome through communication and through letting go of our egos and working through and understanding,” Richardson tells TV Insider. “Both of them need to let go of a certain control that they have over how they think things should have been and how they think the other person should have acted and instead be compassionate and try to listen to each other. Their own attachments is what’s getting in the way of them actually being harmonious with each other. It’s a really beautiful explanation in how we all suffer when we expect someone to be a certain way. And I think it’s a great opportunity for them to grow and to learn, to listen to each other well and to come together.”

What happened to George Russell?

HBO

Even after Bertha (Carrie Coon) made things right with Gladys (Taissa Farmiga) in England, George (Morgan Spector) can’t bring himself to forgive her. It’s not that he’s angry that Bertha might’ve been right all along. According to Spector, it’s that “he can’t forgive himself” for what he did to his daughter at his wife’s insistence.

Giving in to Gladys being married off to Hector, the Duke of Buckingham (Ben Lamb), has left George more angry than ever. His business prospects have had a serious downturn all season long, but Larry found a goldmine (well, copper) on their land in Arizona that will enrich them enough to fund the ambitious transcontinental railroad. Gladys is happy, the family’s fortune is secure, and yet fences aren’t mended between the Russell power couple.

“He’s only glad that Gladys isn’t living in some kind of miserable hell, but it’s also that he let himself down,” Spector says of George’s festering disappointment. “He let her down, and he doesn’t know how to move on from that really.”

He may not have the chance to. George hit the nail in the coffin on his business relationship with Clay (Patrick Page) when revealing Larry’s success in the Arizona mines earlier in the episode. The revelation made Clay’s new employer fire him on the spot, and George bragged that Clay would never work in Manhattan again while lighting a victorious cigar.

The episode ended with an assassin disguised as a delivery man arriving at George’s room at the club. The man shot the others in the room, and the final seconds showed one last bullet being fired point-blank at George. Was the shooter hired by Clay? Can the millionaire CEO survive this attempt on his life? Find out next week.

The Gilded Age, Season 3 Finale, Sunday, August 10, 9/8c, HBO