TV Review: "Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light "(Episodes 4-6)
The acclaimed series draws to a melancholic and wrenching conclusion as Cromwell's inevitable doom finally comes to claim him for its own.
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Warning: Spoilers for the series follow.
There’s an unsettling pleasure to a series like Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light. Even if you haven’t read the book upon which it’s based, you probably still know how things are going to end for Thomas Cromwell. Any Tudor fan knows that he met the unenviable fate of so many of Henry VIII’s other most capable ministers: that is to say, facing the scheming and backbiting of those who yearn for more power and influence, he ended up falling as quickly as he had risen, being sent to the block for treason. This is exactly how this season of Wolf Hall ends, with Cromwell poised to lose his head to Henry’s vicious spirit of revenge and the short-sightedness of the other members of his council, particularly Bishop Gardiner and the Duke of Norfolk.
Before we get to Cromwell’s fall, however, we spend some more time with him as he grapples with the revelation that he had an illegitimate daughter, Jenneke, of whom he knew nothing and whose brief presence in his life makes him rethink his future trajectory. While his enemies like to look at Cromwell as some sort of unfeeling demon, Rylance repeatedly allows us to see past his rather enigmatic exterior to see the genuinely loving and caring family man behind the mask. It’s clear from the moment they meet that Cromwell is devastated that he never knew of Jenneke’s existence and that if he had he would have moved heaven and earth to provide for her.
It’s also deeply poignant to see Cromwell make the choice to refuse Janneke’s offer to take him away from England and out of the tortuous and dangerous world in which he remains enmeshed. For better and worse, however, Cromwell is self-aware enough to know that he can never take that choice; as he admits, it really is a thrill to know that he has the power to change the map of the world. Even so, this doesn’t keep him from indulging in a brief interlude in which he imagines a future in which he has retired to a former abbey, where Janneke waits for him among the cloisters. In that sense, Janneke represents a future that will never be Cromwell’s. At root he remains a creature of Henry VIII’s court, and that means his fate–indeed, his very life–is bound to the king’s desires and whims, mercurial as they are.
Janneke isn’t the only young woman with whom Cromwell forms a bond, for in addition to the Lady Mary–whom he continues to protect–he also proves quite solicitous of Queen Jane, particularly after she falls deathly ill after giving birth to Henry’s long-awaited male heir. When she dies, he even goes so far as to rage at the folly of those whose carelessness and attitude cost the queen her life. It’s a bracing and heartbreaking moment, if also an indiscrete one, since Cromwell seems to be suggesting that Henry himself has done something wrong by not tending to Jane and by forcing her to be nothing more than a broodmare and pawn in his efforts to conceive a son and heir. Rylance’s brilliance as a performer lies in his ability to bring a palpable intensity to those moments when Cromwell lets his inner anger shine out for all to see.
Poetically enough, it’s this tendency to lash out, as well as his dedication to dissolving the monasteries that, at least in part, leads to Cromwell’s final breach with Norfolk, a spat that paves the way for his downfall. There’s something hunted, almost panicked, about Cromwell’s eyes in that moment, as he stands with his back to the powerful Duke, his blade raised for a blow. In this moment, one can well believe that this blacksmith’s son who was a bruiser in his youth might actually stab a peer. It’s the kind of fire and spirit he will keep until the end, and there’s something particularly rewarding about watching him run circles around his interrogators, including the Duke, who can do little more than huff and puff impotently in the face of Cromwell’s more subtle wit and intelligence.
Equally devastating to his standing is the fact that Cromwell agitates for the marriage of Henry to Anna of Cleves, coming perilously close to blackmailing the king to go through with it. Unfortunately for him, she’s not nearly as beautiful or comely as he and his monarch had believed, leading Henry to sour on both her and his counselor. The whole ugly incident is a reminder to Cromwell of how quickly fortune’s wheel can turn, and it gives his enemies, and Henry himself, the excuse they need to bring about his downfall.
Even more haunting is Cromwell’s last face-to-face encounter with Henry. By now it has become clear to almost everyone that the king is starting to lose faith in Cromwell, that manipulators like Gardiner and Norfolk have managed to find a way into his ear, sowing doubts and fears that Cromwell might actually have designs on his throne. Damian Lewis remains a charming but chilling screen presence, and as they reminisce about a trip to the country that they never got to take, one gets the feeling that both men are mourning a friendship and a bond that, in some very important ways, never really existed. How can a divinely appointed monarch like Henry ever really form a bond with any of his servants, no matter how successful they might be?
It’s thus not particularly surprising, if no less terrifying, when a meeting of the Privy Council suddenly goes awry and Cromwell is escorted out. It’s only then, as he confronts Gardiner, that he realizes just how far he has fallen. It’s not just that he has been stripped of his place on the Council; he has also been robbed of all of the things that gave him power and that assured his place in the world. “You are as God made you,” Gardiner says, an ominous reminder that, stripped of the protections of his status and of Henry’s goodwill, there is now nothing standing between Cromwell and a fall that will be every bit as devastating, if no more so, as Wolsey’s a decade prior.
For all that the back half of The Mirror and the Light invites us to align ourselves with Cromwell and to see his fall as a tragedy, the truth is that in some ways he has brought some of this upon himself. The entire season has shown the extent to which he continues to act as if his is the only advice that matters, that Henry should do what he says because he has both the king’s and the nation’s best interests at heart. As he learns to his chagrin, however, there are other interests and other parties who will never be able to forgive him for having come from such common origins. To an ugly and unfortunate extent, that even seems to include the king himself, who is quite willing to believe the worst of the man who has only ever worked for his benefit. As he says to a devastated Ralph Sadler–and kudos to Thomas Brodie-Sangster for bringing so much haunting depth to a secondary character–he simply can’t bring himself to trust Cromwell, in large part because the latter has never forgiven the king for his treatment of Wolsey.
The final episode is nothing less than devastating. As Cromwell’s death draws closer, he makes peace with the various members of his household, urging his son to disavow him and having a final tearful moment with Sadler in what is surely the most wrenching moment in the entire series. At the same time, both Cromwell and we as viewers have nothing but contempt for Thomas Wriothesley, who turned his coat and betrayed his master, only to end up alone and quite clearly miserable.
To sum up, The Mirror and the Light is a powerful and poignant piece of period storytelling, with an evocative score–filled with pensive strings and melancholy female vocalizations–that immerses us fully into Cromwell’s world and into his psyche and allows us to feel just how unsettled the world becomes with every passing day. And yet, for all that this is a show about the Tudor era, it’s also one with some uncomfortable echoes of our own. I don’t think it takes a genius to point out that we’re also living in an era in which a red-haired and bloated tyrant who believes that loyalty to him is the only thing that matters and is willing to destroy anyone and anything that stands in his way. As Cromwell’s doom reveals, however, it’s a dangerous and perilous thing to put one’s fate–let alone that of a nation–into the hands of someone who cares for little more than his own aggrandizement and his own ego. Let us hope that our country doesn’t go the same way as Cromwell, stricken of a head and consigned to oblivion.