‘Nine Perfect Strangers’: Lucas Englander on That Wild Mushroom Trip

Disney / Reiner Bajo

Martin, who’s still reeling from what he did by dosing the ALS-stricken Victoria (Christine Baranski), confesses to Agnes (Dolly de Leon) about his crisis of faith. “I did nothing good,” he tells her. “What I’m trying to understand is, am I capable of doing evil?”

When other guests arrive with questions, he tells them Masha is putting them all in danger and accuses David (Mark Strong) of wanting to steal the whole place from them with Masha’s help. In fact, he insists Masha “duped” Helena into handing the keys to the palace over to her instead of him. “I could never compete with a former patient she’d healed,” he says. To his credit, even Peter (Henry Golding) thinks his father’s greed and need to own (and thus destroy) magic will be ruinous.

After he divulges Masha’s history as a patient of Helena’s, and David dresses him down as unprofessional and undeserving in front of everyone else as a result, Martin proceeds to silently break a vase before returning to his lab and mixing up a mushroom tea for himself. At first, his hallucinations are colorful and fun. He shouts for his mother, dancing in the rainbow-strobing lights, and insults himself in German. Things take a turn for the weirdest when he looks up from the floor to find his mother standing in the room with him as she says, “Hello, I’ve missed you.”

“He needs to fight for something because he knows if he doesn’t right now, it’s maybe never gonna happen, and he’s gonna lose himself forever into this character that he believes he has to be,” Lucas Englander told TV Insider of the character’s decision to dose himself.

As for Helena’s decision to hand the keys to Zauberwald instead of her own son, Lena Olin explained, “I think as parents, we are both a horrible devil and the savior, and we do it in different ways. And I think her love for Martin is so strong and there, but her worries are also, I think, heightened by the fact that she knows she’s gonna leave. And I think love and passion between parents and children is such an interesting subject.”

At the same time, Masha is off drinking her own tea to summon Helena and gets David to submit to a dose so he can meet the ghost of Tatiana. This initiates the grand finale with a midnight fireworks show, after which David wakes up in the common room with all of the guests looking on. She warns him that what’s about to happen might be painful, so we’ll have to wait and see what she still has in store when next week’s finale arrives.

Nine Perfect Strangers, Wednesdays, Hulu