‘We Were the Lucky Ones’ Finale: What Happened?
[Editor’s note: This interview contains spoilers for the final episode of Hulu‘s “We Were the Lucky Ones.”]
It’s always darkest before the dawn, and that was certainly the case for “We Were the Lucky Ones,” the Hulu miniseries based on the true story of the Kurc family, Jews from Poland who managed to all survive WWII.
The final episode (the show concluded May 2) begins with Halina Kurc (Joey King) imprisoned in Germany. Successfully hiding in plain sight for years, she is eventually captured, and regularly beaten up in jail. All hope seems lost.
“[They were] some of the most intense scenes in the whole show [for] my character,” King told IndieWire. “It’s tough, it’s violent. It’s tough to watch, but it’s also really important. And I think where we landed with it was very helpful in showcasing how brutal it was without being gratuitous. [Showrunner Erica Lipez,] she never wanted to be gratuitous [about] violence towards women. I really love that point of view. So we landed in a place that was really a melding of showing the stuff that’s super important, and also making sure that people can still watch this!”
Happily, after that harrowing final hurdle (plus one Von Trapp-esque escape across the Alps), the Kurc family is able to finally reunite after horrific years apart. In one moving final scene, the entire family gathers for Passover seder in 1947, reckoning with all they had overcome.
“We wanted to acknowledge what they’ve been through,” director Thomas Kail previously told IndieWire. “I feel like there something about the reading of the names of those who aren’t there that feels like the contrast of [their togetherness]. Also the incorporation of both, I think, is very much in the culture, that even in a time of celebration of life, that we talk about who’s not there. … By acknowledging and addressing the loss that exists, even though this family was able to somehow make it through, it is honest because that is what happened and that’s how the family felt.”
It takes a colder heart than this reporter’s to not be brought to tears by the end credits, which show pictures and videos of the Kurc family over the years, from right after the war to relatively recent home movies of the family’s descendants.
“[It’s the] idea of what it means to have survived, and what the family looks like now and the expansion of that,” Kail said about the idea behind the moving finals moments. “And then it all comes back to this group and that final image of them in 1919. And you think now there’s a hundred descendants of that family.”
Those descendants include Georgia Hunter, who wrote the 2017 book of the same name upon which the Hulu show is based (she’s also an EP on the project). She is the granddaughter of Addy (portrayed by Logan Lerman).
“There were over 20 survivors in all, including my grandfather and his siblings, parents, cousins and in-laws,” Hunter wrote in a post on her website. “Together, they accounted for nearly 7 percent of the total number of Jewish survivors in their hometown of Radom [the city’s thriving prewar population of 30,000 Jews shrank to fewer than 300 after the Holocaust]. While I often get swept up in what many describe as the ‘miraculous’ story of my family’s survival, it’s important for me to remember the dozens of relatives whose lives, like those of some six million others, were not blessed with a happy ending.”
Additional reporting by Sarah Shachat.
“We Were the Lucky Ones” is now streaming on Hulu.
