The Serpent Queen Season 2 Ends with the Collapse of Its Strongest Relationship
Emma McDonald talks Rahima’s Season 2 journey and the break-up of the show’s real one true pairing.
Photo Courtesy of Starz
The Starz period drama The Serpent Queen initially begins as something of a two-hander, an extended conversation between infamous French queen Catherine de Medici and a lowly servant girl named Rahima. As Catherine recounts the dramatic story of her life thus far, she takes the younger woman under her wing, sensing something of a kindred spirit in a girl who wants more than she’s been told she can have.
The Rahima we meet in The Serpent Queen Season 2 is a very different woman than in its first installment. In the world of the show, a dozen years have passed since the Season 1 finale, allowing the boy king Charles to grow up, his mother to fully settle into her role as Regent of France, and her most trusted handmaiden to establish herself as the center of the French court’s web of secrets and intrigue. For Emma McDonald, who took over the role from Sennia Nanua for Season 2, Rahima is a much more active character, plotting alongside Catherine as something that feels almost like an equal, rather than a student learning at her feet.
“It was really interesting, joining [the show] where I did,” McDonald tells Paste. “I think Rahima started very much as the pupil and ends the master, constantly challenging Catherine as the story goes on. She’s so calculated and does so much with so little. She’s in these spaces, not really saying much, but very much a presence. Just listening. And by the end, she’s the one asking the questions.”
In the Serpent Queen’s first season, Rahima was often used as a plot device, a largely passive listener whose presence allowed Catherine to frame and shape her own story in the telling of it. In its second, the narrative has caught up to itself, so to speak, and both women must navigate a relationship that’s on more even ground.
“You have to be so clever with what you allow others to see. I think that’s something I learned from watching Samantha [Morton, who plays Catherine], actually. To do a lot with a little.” McDonald continues. “Her performance is so beautifully small and nuanced, but so big at the same time. I took most of my cues from her watching her and how she conducts herself in a space because I think that’s what Rahima would’ve done.”
So much of Rahima’s character is defined by her ability to exist in what often feels like a liminal position within the world of the French court. Effortlessly moving everywhere from Catherine’s side to the servants’ quarters, she’s one part master of secrets, one part problem solver, and one part sounding board. The leader of Catherine’s alleged gang of loyal female courtiers known as the Flying Squadron, she has access to information that no other character on the canvas—save Catherine herself—can match.
“It’s really interesting what Justin [Haythe, Serpent Queen showrunner] has done in making Rahima the leading figure of the Flying Squadron, which puts her firmly in the middle of the upstairs/downstairs world of the court,” McDonald says. “And her role within that group, you see a different Rahima than how she is behind closed doors in her own chambers versus with members of the Royal Family or the Guises, or even Catherine.”
Catherine’s infamous Flying Squadron was real—a group of women the queen used to spy on the men of the French court and visiting political leaders (likely with a little seduction thrown in for good measure). They’re a perfect addition to a season of The Serpent Queen that’s so focused on the faces women must present to the world in order to wield power.
They also further add to The Serpent Queen’s deliberately diverse canvas, which not only features multiple characters of color, but refuses to whitewash their stories.
“There would have been Black people at court, absolutely,” McDonald says when asked about the diversity of the series’ cast and story. “There were Black kings and queens and musicians and scientists [in this time period], but we never see those stories told, especially in period dramas. What this show does in such a beautiful and clever way is use Rahima’s story to make a space for that. Maybe her story isn’t necessarily historically accurate [in terms of her specific relationship with Catherine], but I believe there would have been many Rahimas, or women like Rahima, at court.”
The second season also introduces the real-life historical figure Alessandro de Medici, Catherine’s illegitimate Black half-brother who was nicknamed “Il Moro” for his dark skin.
“Then you have Alessandro’s story, which of course, is historically accurate. You could have a whole show that just centers on Alessandro, which is one I would leap at the chance of watching,” she laughs. “He’s a duke in his own right. He’s educated. He’s brilliant and clever and witty. It was really fascinating.”
Rahima’s subsequent romance with Alessandro, a relationship McDonald says is essentially “a love triangle” with Catherine, is really the first time we see her “really want something for herself.”
“I think their story is so beautiful. Their time together is so short but genuine,” she says. “They see each other right from the get-go. in a world where so much is like a game, as it were, to have two people who truly see one another for who they are and still want to be with one another without giving up their independence, that was important. And I hope that, in itself, just me being there and Ashley [Thomas, who plays Alessandro] being there, showing that relationship invites a whole new audience into period drama.”
The Serpent Queen Season 2 ends with a dramatic final installment that sees Princess Margot and Henri of Navarre get married, all as a front for Catherine to orchestrate the infamous St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, an event that unleashed a wave of Catholic violence against Huguenots throughout France. Catherine not only straight-up murders Edith and her supporters, but she takes a shot at most of her other enemies too, although it turns out the Bourbon Princes of the Blood miraculously survive to scheme another day. Even her own brother Alessandro is among the casualties, a piece of news that Catherine takes no small amount of joy in delivering to Rahima, who has been essentially imprisoned in her room.
The confrontation that follows between them is one of Season 2’s most satisfying moments, as The Serpent Queen’s two greatest schemers face off against one another, striking directly at each other’s emotional weak points.
“I think the really fascinating thing with Catherine and why she ends up the way she is because no one has loved her,” McDonald says. “But by the end [of the season], Rahima has that. She is loved, by someone who is not asking for anything from her. And Catherine has never had that—from her children, from her husband, from her brother, from her own parent. And now this person that she, I suppose, believes she has created is doing for herself what she can’t.”
In many ways, at least in Catherine’s eyes, that is Rahima’s ultimate betrayal—more so than sleeping with Alessandro or plotting to leave France with him. Even when the pair are at one another’s throats, Catherine still accuses her protegee of asking the wrong questions, of choosing the wrong side.
“I think Catherine thought she knew Rahima. And, likewise, I think Rahima thought she knew Catherine,” McDonald explains. “But now their masks are down. They have truly seen one another, And they’re both so intelligent that I think those masks will have to come back up again, just in order for them both to survive. But those words have been said and they can’t be unsaid now. Rahima has called her out on her biggest fear, which is the fact that she is unloved.”
The season ends with Catherine triumphant—but at what cost? Charles is dying of consumption, Anjou is becoming increasingly unhinged, and all her efforts to maintain peace between France’s warring religious factions have come to naught. For her part, Rahima is a literal prisoner, trapped and pregnant with a Medici child that’s Catherine’s niece or nephew. Where does either woman go from here? While The Serpent Queen has yet to be renewed for a third season, McDonald has firm opinions about what she’d like to see next for her character.
“I want Rahima to win out over Catherine,” she says gleefully. “I love Catherine, of course I do. And history tells us some of the things that we’ll see. But in terms of Rahima’s story—that’s still untold. I hope she plays a very key part in Catherine’s demise. I cannot wait to see what is in store for them. I hope we get the chance to see it.”
Lacy Baugher Milas is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter @LacyMB.
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