This post will contain major spoilers, so I'll put the review under the cut.
By the time Miss Havisham has blown Compeyson's brains out and punctuated the act with a quip, like Deadpool in a dress*; by the time Pip has ended up with Biddy, Estella has possibly ended up with Jaggers**, and poor Herbert (madly in love with Estella in this version) has simply faded from view, it's abundantly clear that Steven Knight has no more interest in the ending of Great Expectations than he had in any of the rest of the story.
I don't just mean the plot, either. The themes of the story are almost completely lost in the muddle. It sounds very odd to say that, in an adaptation so relentlessly modern in its sensibilities, Dickens's theme of classism almost disappeared. But it got buried by the general idea of "everything is awful at all times." Similarly, the theme of repentance and pardon was diminished almost to the point of nonexistence. Jaggers is the only one who experiences any sort of emotional journey or redemption arc, which would be just fine, except that it's Pip who's supposed to do that. No matter how creative you want to get with your adaptation -- and I've watched and enjoyed some that got very creative indeed -- aren't there at least a few characters and story beats that are supposed to stay more-or-less consistent with the original?
But the long and short of it is, there wasn't room in this frenetic, brutal series for any theme or idea to have time to grow and blossom -- it was more just six episodes of senseless noise. And from what I've heard, audiences responded accordingly. I haven't seen the Hulu stats, but in Britain, there was a steep ratings drop-off over the course of the series.*** One can only hope this means that this team will never be allowed to handle a Dickens work again.
*I hope my reference works; I've never seen Deadpool. But my first thought was "Schwarzenegger in a dress," and I knew that would date me hopelessly.
**This was my take on seeing the two dance together at Pip and Biddy's wedding. Others have speculated that he was being more of a father figure to her. Hard to say for sure. But Pip did tell Estella she should go find someone who was a fellow exile, and Jaggers very much acts like that in this version, so ...
***In regards to this hyperlink, I'd like to note that I don't subscribe to the "woke adaptation" charge. "Wokeness," whatever that was even meant to mean here, wasn't the problem. The problem was incompetent storytelling.
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