Swarm Ending Explained: Who is Your Favorite Artist? Does Dre Meet Ni’Jah?
On Friday, March 17, the Swarm series, created by Donald Glover and Janine Nabers, the same minds that had given life to the highly successful Atlanta for FX, made its debut in the huge Prime Video catalog. As we explained to you in our review of the Prime Video show, with Swarm, Nabers, and Glover change genre and veer towards the psychological thriller and the biting contemporary satire; dominating here is Dominique Fishback, an actress already appreciated in the Oscar-winning film Judas and the Black Messiah, and who shows off a creepy interpretative versatility.
In our explanation of the finale of Swarm, we will try to get to the bottom of some of the narrative knots of this unsettling series with very bloody thriller tones, a real revenge story set in the environment of the toxic fanbases of the greatest contemporary pop stars. It is certainly no mystery that the plot of Glover and Nabers’ Prime Video show is inspired by some details of Beyoncé Knowles’ public persona and the online hive of her craziest and most hardcore fans. The disturbing Dre Jackson, the protagonist of this shocking and paroxysmal series, is its most effective and dangerous emblem.
Swarm Summary Recap: What is Swarm About?
To better understand what happens in the final episode of Swarm, we must necessarily take a few steps back and understand the personal journey of Dre Jackson, the protagonist of the series played by a very good Dominique Fishback. We are between 2016 and 2018; Andrea Jackson is a black girl who is particularly obsessed with a fictitious pop star, but whose appearance, the details of her look, and her wild fan base seem to remind us of the hugely popular Beyoncé Knowles. An unruly passion that she shares with her best friend and putative sister Marissa between one Twitter post and another, always and continuously connected to the small screen of her mobile phone so as not to miss even the latest social notification regarding their undisputed idol.
Marissa’s sudden death though, each of the seven episodes that make up this disturbing miniseries tell a specific moment in the psychogenic path of our disturbing protagonist, from the social obsession with the pop star Na’jia to the sudden death by overdose of her putative sister, the only one who not only supported her morally and psychologically but also in his fixation on the singer created especially for the TV show.
Swarm Ending Explained: What Happens in The Final Episode of Swarm?
“Only God can make happy endings possible.” This is the enigmatic title and open to various interpretations of the final episode of Swarm, the same one in which Dre, after killing his partner after the argument about the tickets, continues to flee from the police officers who are pursuing her and continuing to get her hands on various credit cards (including those of her ex-victims) to maintain a lifestyle that allows her to easily change identity and social status. But when Dre burns Rashida’s body to eliminate the evidence of her guilt, he realizes that he left the concert tickets in his ex-partner’s pocket.
In a panic, Dre goes to the concert anyway but in the absence of paper tickets or an email proving the purchase, she is forced to kill a scalper who was selling them illegally outside the stadium, thus entering the concert and approaching the pop star of his obsessions. When Dre manages to get close to the very first row of the stage, she steps over him and tries to get dangerously close to Na’jia; promptly, some of her bodyguards block her to make her get off, but the singer orders them to let her go: when the star approaches Dre, she has the face of Marissa, her putative sister and best friend. The very last scenes of the last episode of Swarm show us Dre escorted in Na’jia’s private car: the two look at each other and embrace each other, while our protagonist with tears in her eyes tells her: “Thank you!” Where does reality end and imagination begins in the finale of Swarm?
The fact that when Dre takes the stage, he sees the singer with the face of her friend Marissa suggests that most probably the disturbed girl never really managed to meet her heart star, indeed it is even possible that she was stopped and arrested well before approaching the pop star after she took the stage. An ambiguous ending that however seems to give way to the fantasies of a disturbed and obsessive mind, in a happy ending that (as the emphatic title of the final episode suggests) only God can make possible; a divinity that for Dre has the features of his favorite singer. Or his best friend?
Who is Your Favorite Artist?
However, Marissa’s death will have an unwanted and very dangerous effect on Andrea’s psyche: the girl played by an extraordinary and quick-change artist Dominique Fishback will give life to a veritable trail of heinous murders, all in the name of Na’jia and his putative sister disappeared. On the order of “Who is your favorite artist?”, Dre will always approach with different names and looks towards individuals of various backgrounds and contexts united by two elements: they have been the architects of a wrong or violence against a woman, or their favorite artist is not Na’jia at all. This will be enough for our Andrea to take a car, escape from her identity and her difficult past to make a trip to the city of Atlanta and get a job and the money necessary to fulfill her dream and that of Marissa: to attend the mega-concert at the Mercedes Benz Stadium in the American city.
At each stage, the girl constantly changes her “skin” and identity, carrying out heinous acts in the name of what is called a “Swarm“ on social networks, or the digital hive made up of the most avid and obsessed fans of the American pop star, ready for anything to defend his public and private life from the haters or detractors of the web. A journey towards madness that also functions as an irreverent and paradoxical satire on the toxicity of some contemporary fandoms; an artistic intuition, that of Glover and Nabers, which gave life on balance to one of the most surprising miniseries of 2023, to date.
A Trail of Blood That Leads to The Concert of A Lifetime?
The trail of blood that Dre will start will not stop until he gets what he has always longed for most together with the late Marissa: attending the Na’jia concert and getting closer, if possible, to their idol. To do this, the disturbed girl will have to make a bloody journey to the city of Atlanta, meeting various characters in front of her path (and among these, we point out a juicy cameo by Billie Eilish in the role of the leader of an all-female cult!), until arriving in Atlanta in the guise of Tony, the girl does not know the young Rashida and falls madly in love with her.
The two decide to embark on a lasting romantic relationship and put down roots in the city. A year has passed since Rashida and Dre (still in Tony’s androgynous role) are together, and so to celebrate their first anniversary of a romantic relationship, the protagonist played by Dominique Fishback buys two tickets for the Na’jia concert. But there is an insurmountable problem: Rashida not only doesn’t love Na’jia’s music, but she hates it with all her heart; a detail, this, that will not go unnoticed by Dre, who while loving her partner, decides to suffocate and kill her too.
