* this analysis is full of spoilers!
** content warning for suicide and eating disorders
I didn’t understand many elements of the show, but something about it resonated with my soul. It’s about much more than two people trying to figure out why they keep dying and reliving the same day – I didn’t understand how, but I felt it.
Russian Doll is so full of symbolism, of psychological and spiritual concepts, that it’s probably impossible to pick up on all of it on the first watch. I’ve watched it 15 times and still don’t understand everything.
But it’s been interesting to see how the more wisdom I obtain during my spiritual journey, the more surprises this show has. It’s almost like a puzzle unto itself. That’s why I keep returning to it (and will probably write a Part 2).
Here are some of the key elements and characters from the show, explained:
Remember how Nadia couldn’t let go of the theory that she and Alan were the same person? She wasn’t right, but she wasn’t wrong, either.
Anima = the unconscious feminine, animus = the unconscious masculine.
Most classical interpretations of this focus on women struggling with their animus (issues with lack of control and their father) and men struggling with their anima (issues with intuition/inner voice and their mother).
Russian Doll interestingly flips this rigid understanding of anima and animus. Nadia is the “masculine” or animus, and Alan is the “feminine” or anima. They are essentially two halves of a whole. Opposite manifestations of the same soul. Some people understand this connection as twin flames.
They are essentially two halves of a whole
We can see this dynamic between Nadia and Alan by the way they navigated their loops before meeting each other. Nadia immediately started investigating, focusing on the external and her environment (masculine energy). We’re not quite sure what Alan does during this time because we don’t meet him until a few episodes in. But we know that as soon as Nadia has a real conversation with him, he already had a hunch about what was happening to them (feminine energy). Even after they meet each other, Nadia continues to try to find clues in her environment while Alan genuinely tries to understand the people in his life causing him pain, like Bea and Mike. It’s them coming together to combine these points of view that allows them to see the picture more clearly – a strong theme in the show.
Each method is pointless alone; it leads to dead ends. Although Nadia takes a more active approach and may even appear to be more crucial to figuring out the loop because of her logic and external curiosity, it’s Alan who knows that it has something to do with a psychological dilemma. And it changes the course of the whole show. Nadia wouldn’t have realized that one of the cruxes of her loop was what Lucy and her affair with John represented for her. Before Alan, Nadia was chasing drug dealers and rabbis down dead ends in a search for answers because she refused to look inward. And before Nadia, Alan made absolutely no waves in his loops, doing the exact same things every day because he was afraid to act on his hunch even though it weighed on him heavily. As soon as Nadia encouraged him to change things up in his loops, he started getting real answers, too.
The role that Horse and Oatmeal play stumps a lot of viewers, me included. They’re evidently meaningful – not just in the way that Nadia fixates on them. But they have a way of making the viewer feel like they have a deeper, almost intangible purpose. I think they represent the dual sides of consciousness.
Oatmeal = awareness, interconnectedness
Oatmeal, Nadia’s outdoor cat, represents free will, divine consciousness, awareness, and interconnectedness with your environment. This reflects what cats represent in a more spiritual context in many traditions.
Oatmeal also represents Nadia’s “awakened” or higher self. Nadia compares herself to Oatmeal constantly – he reminds her of the best version of herself. (I.e. not “belonging” to anyone but still being an important and beloved part of the community as a bodega cat.)
The way Nadia loses Oatmeal at the beginning of her death loop signifies that she’s become out of touch with herself and the collective All – quite literally existing in another timeline. This is why Oatmeal randomly disappears and switches timelines, too.
Horse = rejection of awareness, disconnectedness
Horse represents a fracture between the self and the collective. He is the part of the soul that tells you nothing at all matters. Disillusionment, disbelief, and nihilism. He is literally separated from society because he is homeless.
If you listen to the little bit Horse shares about his life, he used to deal in cryptocurrency but decided that it was “fake.” His disillusionment appears to be his reason for being homeless. He no longer cares to be a part of society.
Horse represents Nadia’s “unawakened” self. It’s the side of her that wants to detach to the point of pushing everyone and everything away. The nihilist side of her that thinks, “Most people are garbage” and that nothing she experiences has deeper meaning.
Horse is kind of like Oatmeal, but not really.
Oatmeal is “homeless” in the way that he has many homes, many loved ones. He is connected to the people around him. Horse is not.
The final loop/episode when Nadia finds Oatmeal with Horse represents the integration of these two sides. Horse giving Oatmeal back to Nadia signaled that she ultimately chooses to stay connected instead of spiritually dead.
Horse and spiritual death brings me to the next topic:
Her mother Lenora calls Nadia’s hair her crown; Ruth mentions that Lenora was obsessed with wearing purple for a year because she read it was the seventh chakra healing.
The seventh/purple chakra is the crown chakra. It is associated with the third eye and – of course, hair.
The crown chakra represents high thought and collective consciousness. Your intuition, your inner voice – these come from your crown chakra.
Horse is fixated on cutting Nadia’s hair throughout the show. This can mean rejecting her higher consciousness, giving up, and rejecting to connect with other people. This lines up with his role.
A huge theme in Russian Doll is how relative (and distorted) a single point-of-view can be. Alan’s fear of therapy, Lenora’s angst with mirrors, and Nadia’s warped view of her mother are all manifestations of this. These characters all refuse an external point of view, which ultimately causes turmoil in their lives.
The viewer is constantly brought back to the traumatic moments in Nadia’s childhood when Lenora would break all the mirrors in the house. Ruth (their therapist) giving input specifically seems to set Lenora off. Lenora breaking mirrors represents not accepting help or a different point of view. Rejecting reflection and only trusting your own point of view.
We can see Nadia internalize Lenora’s neuroses. Whenever Ruth makes healthy suggestions (like eating chicken noodle soup for dinner instead of Lenora’s insistence on eating just watermelon), Nadia obeys her mother even when she doesn’t want to. She wants Lenora’s approval. But Lenora’s approval is coming from a very rigid, singular, and warped point of view.
This is why in the dramatic scene when Nadia finally meets Lucy, Nadia spits up mirror shards. Nadia was internalizing Lenora’s point of view (the broken mirrors) since her death. As a child, Nadia had to symbolically swallow those broken mirrors. Lenora’s lack of reflection clearly caused chaos wherever they went and Nadia always cleaned up her messes. Nadia spitting up the mirror shards is her purging the trauma she inherited from her mother and accepting that outside POVs are helpful and can help you get closer to the truth.
(By the way, a lot of people don’t seem to understand why Lucy turned into Young Nadia during this loop. It was a very trippy, nightmarish scene. Nadia was afraid to meet Lucy because she would, in a way, be meeting herself. Lucy is the same age as Nadia was when she was taken from her mother, and Nadia technically took Lucy’s father from her. Nadia didn’t want to be reminded of that time in her life, much less when Lucy’s distress is partially caused by her.
This is also why it was important for her to give Lucy the Anne of Green Gables book – she was sharing her “life force” or will to live. Nadia often says she wouldn’t have survived without that book.)
Our friends, lovers, and chosen family always reflect a little piece of us. Sometimes we see something we like about ourselves, sometimes it’s a wounded aspect of us that we struggle with but deeply relate to.
In these loops, Maxine and Ruth are reflecting Nadia’s consciousness, and Ferran and Bea are reflections of Alan’s. In the times when Nadia or Alan are especially non-receptive to figuring out what’s happening to them, their loved ones seem to try to veer them off the path even more.
Sometimes it seems like Maxine specifically is in on the whole thing and mocking Nadia. Remember when Maxine said to Nadia, “I like that you’re a cunt, it makes me feel morally superior” ? This is the wounded part of Nadia that sought out a friendship with Maxine. Nadia knows that Maxine will ultimately always accept her self-destructive behavior. It enables Nadia to not have to face that part of herself. So Maxine reflects that very part of Nadia – being avoidant and not wanting to face that which would require deeper introspection. Because Nadia tries to break out of this dynamic by trying to figure out why she’s dying, Maxine reacts with hostility.
Even in such a quotable show, this quote from Mike is one of my favorites throughout Russian Doll. What the hell does that even mean?
Think about it like this: whenever someone makes a casual choice without thinking, Mike is close behind. He’s the choice you make when you don’t want to make a choice.
I.e., Nadia randomly sleeping with him on the night of the first loop, and never doing it again. Bea sleeping with him to distract herself from her relationship problems with Alan. Even Maxine flirting with Mike because she was bored after Nadia left the party.)
“Choosing” Mike (cause you know, “nobody chooses” him for real), represents sloth and falling into temptation. It’s an easy choice without sustenance.
In one of the final episodes, Alan says, “Our minds can trick us, but the body doesn’t lie.”
Nadia’s eating disorder and Alan’s compulsive working out are manifestations of them both trying to contain and control the trauma in their physical bodies. Nadia’s eating disorder can be hard to catch if you don’t know what to look for. But it’s clear that it stems from trauma with her mother. Lenora’s obsession with watermelon was a huge tip-off.
Throughout the show, the majority of things that Nadia eats are related to chicken (chicken wings, an egg, Maxine’s chicken, Ruth’s chicken noodle soup). Being fixated on a specific kind of food is characteristic for EDs too – it’s a type of control. In a spiritual sense, chickens specifically represent internal analysis and uncovering hidden truths. Chicken eggs represent the hidden, the womb/maternal lineage, and transformation.
