Phoebe Waller-Bridge had said that she didn’t want to do a second season of “Fleabag” because she had already told the story she wanted to tell. “Fleabag” was originally a ten minute sketch that she expanded into a one-woman play of the same name and then developed into a 2 hour plus TV series. That was enough for “Fleabag”. Also, what was the point? “Fleabag” ended perfectly, with her pushing the camera (the audience) away from her. Why would the camera be following her again?

 

Phoebe stated that in order to write a second season she felt the need to know why we were back in Fleabag’s life. As she said to The Hollywood Reporter, it wasn’t until she had a new idea about how to play with the form again, about what her new relationship with the audience would be, that she decided a second season was possible.

 

This new season was also inspired by a conversation Phoebe had with her friend, actor Andrew Scott. As he explained to Vulture, they met one day and started to talk about love loss and religion. It was then that she asked him if he would be interested in playing a role in the show. He accepted. She then went home and started writing “Fleabag” Season 2, one of the most heartbreakingly beautiful and ABSOLUTELY PERFECT pieces of Television I have ever seen. Hell, that I have ever experienced. 

 

The first episode of this second (and sadly) last season is incredible. The season starts by establishing itself. The same way the first season started with Fleabag talking to us and letting us in in her life, it was important to start this second season by letting us know why we were hanging out with her again. “This is a love story”, she tells us while wiping her bloody nose in a bathroom inside a fancy restaurant. These are the first words of the season. And just like that: Boom. We’re back. 

 

I’ll mostly be analyzing this love story in this post, however, this season gave us much more than that: Belinda (Kristin Scott Thomas) and her amazing speech on women, pain and menopause. There’s also Fleabag’s counseling session with Fiona Shaw, more Father and Godmother and of course, more Claire and her relationship with Fleabag. In this season Claire really comes to life: she forgives Fleabag, tells her she loves her (“The only person I’d run through an airport for is you.” This means “I love you” in Claire) and she (finally) leaves Martin for her new love interest… Klare. Yes Claire and Klare. Oh and I forgot Claire’s pencil haircut. Not pencil. Chic. French. Klare loves it. 

 

Going back to the first episode of the season, it is simply a masterclass. The writing (“Is that fur?” / “Yes but it’s OK because it had a stroke”), the editing (“His mom is a LESBI-” Hard cut to Fleabag outside smoking) and acting (Fleabag covering for Claire’s miscarriage) are just PERFECTION. We are reunited with Fleabag and her family for a family dinner about a year after the events in season one. Father and Godmother are getting married and they have invited their Priest (who Fleabag and Claire christen as Hot Priest) over for dinner. He’s a cool, sweary Priest”, so of course he quickly establishes a connection with Fleabag. It starts with his flirtatious “Well fuck you then” when Fleabag leaves him hanging after handing him a cigarette. It continues with a couple of fleeting looks and it culminates when Fleabag, clearly bored with this family dinner, turns to us and lets us know “No one has asked me a question in forty-five minu-“ just to be interrupted by the Priest asking: “So what do you do?”. Fleabag’s caught off-guard. So is her family. So are we. Was it just a coincidence? As the season progresses, we realise it probably wasn’t.

 

Fleabag is quickly interested in Priest. So she makes her way to try and talk to him. They clearly get on well with each other. During their meetings, they talk about religion, sex and God while drinking canned gin & tonics. Priest is an interesting character. We don’t know much about him or his past. What we do know is that he has a pedophile lorry-driver brother, his parents are both alcoholics, he does not get along with his mother and it seems like he has (as Andrew Scott has mentioned in his Vulture interview) a troubled relationship with alcohol. Most notably, he mentions that before joining priesthood he had a lot of sex. We can sense that he too, like Fleabag, has used sex in an unhealthy way. This is why his relationship with God and the celibacy that comes with it is important to him. Just like Fleabag tells us at the beginning of the season how she has been trying to better herself recently: eating avocado toast, exercising and saying no to sex; Hot Priest is also in a path of redemption by committing himself to God.

 

This is what makes this relationship beautiful and ultimately unattainable. At this moment of his life, celibacy is what is keeping Hot Priest mentally healthy. Meanwhile, Fleabag is lonely and looking for a relationship. In episode four, in the flashback to her mother’s funeral, Fleabag tells Boo that she doesn’t know what to do with all the love she had for her mother. “I’ll take it. […] No I’m serious. It sounds lovely”, Boo tells her. So Fleabag poured her love into Boo who is now gone too. Her Father also talks to Fleabag about love in the finale: “I think you know how to love better than any of us. That’s why you find it all so painful”. Maybe Priest felt the same way. He did not know how to deal with his love and then he found religion. “I believe I am supposed to love people as a father”, he says.

 

I feel from these moments that Fleabag and Priest have lived through similar troubles with love and relationships. They are both ultimately trying to find the same thing. As Fleabag blurts out in the confession scene: she is looking for someone to tell her what to do. They are both looking for guidance. Priest has found it in God and Fleabag is looking for it in the Priest. 

 

This is why the famous “Kneel” scene is so cathartic, beautiful and intimate. Some people have argued that the Priest kissing her in that vulnerable moment felt predatory. I disagree. The relationship between Fleabag and the Priest has been incredibly flirty throughout the show. Fleabag has not made a big effort in hiding her attraction from him. He knows she likes him and has let her know they are not going to have sex. So when this scene comes, the Priest know something is up with her because she came to pray. This is something out of character for Fleabag who has repeatedly told him she does not believe in God. So he tries to help her get things off her chest as he can see something is clearly up. Throughout the confession scene we do not see his face. When Fleabag has confessed, there’s a moment of silence before he talks. He is clearly processing. “Kneel” is what he usually says, probably followed by what prayers the person is supposed to say. He can’t think of any, though. I think Fleabag’s words have really hit him. He feels the same. Fleabag’s insecurities are the ones he had (probably still has) and what brought him to God. In hearing her, though, he flashes back to this uncertainty. He is vulnerable too. He kisses her because he wants to connect, to help, to let her know it is OK to feel that way, to let her know that he too feels that way.

 

And in that moment, a picture drops and interrupts them. The same way a picture dropped when Fleabag said she didn’t believe in God. So he stops. Priest has had several of what he considers “signs from God”. When the first picture drops, he says “I love it when he does that!” as in, I’ve seen this happen before. He also gets his help getting that drink he can’t reach from the cupboard (not sure how healthy that is for him, but truth is he asks for God’s help and the drink drops for him). So when this picture interrupts their kiss, he takes it as a warning. He is clearly shaken. He interprets this as: This is something he is not supposed to do. Personally, I believe that the picture probably fell due to a bad screw. But that does not matter. We have seen how Priest has been constructed and set up as a character so we can understand how he sees this is a sign. 

 

If we have any doubts about the important connection Fleabag and the Priest have, Phoebe Waller-Bridge takes it a step forward by delving deeper into that storytelling tool that started it all. The tool she needed to know how to reincorporate in season two in order to write the season: breaking the fourth wall. In a magical moment in episode three, when the Priest tells Fleabag they should be friends, she turns to us and lets us know they will last a week. The Priest looks confused:

 

Priest: “What was THAT?!”

Fleabag: “What?”

Priest: “Where did… where did you just go?”

Fleabag: “What?”

Priest: “You just went somewhere.”

Fleabag: [looks at the camera again, confused]

Priest: “There! There! Where did you just go?”

Fleabag: “Nowhere.”

Priest: “Ok…”

 

So the Priest can tell when Fleabag is not all there, when she is not being present or honest. Nobody else in the show is able to notice that. Not Claire, not even her Father. We don’t even know if Boo was able to notice this (maybe Fleabag started breaking the fourth wall after her death, we don’t know for sure). Anyway, what is important here is that Phoebe clearly wanted to let us know that the Priest can read her better than anyone else, that he connects with her at a level that nobody else in the show does. In another occasion, the Priest turns to camera himself, looks at us with a crazy face, trying to see who the hell Fleabag is talking to, granting us with this screen capture which I assure you is going to be my new wallpaper. 

 

In episode five, Priest shows up to Fleabag’s door and after a brief conversation he asks her: “We are going to have sex aren’t we?”. Fleabag, of course, says yes, echoing what the Counsellor had told her: “You already know what you are going to do, everybody does”. They both knew from the minute they met that this was going to happen. Priest had told Fleabag he can’t have sex with her because he’ll fall in love with her. What he probably meant is that he can’t deal with human relationships at this time. Remember he believes he is supposed to love as a father. Fleabag had told her counsellor that she is not having sex anymore because “Sex didn’t bring anything good”. As she is saying that we see Boo stepping into traffic. These two have clearly a troubled relationship with sex. However, Counsellor was right. Both Priest and Fleabag knew what they were going to do from the start. They can’t resist each other and so they both give in. And Fleabag gets to caress his neck. His beautiful neck.

 

Early on in the season, the Priest jokingly tells Fleabag that she is good for him because she makes him question his faith and he has never been closer to God. And there was probably more truth to that statement than we thought. Having sex with her is, in a way, the ultimate test for him. He is in love with Fleabag, but part of him is scared. He knows what relationships (human relationships at least) have brought him. During the last episode of the season, they can’t keep their hands from each other. 

Priest: “I don’t know what this feeling is.” 

Fleabag: “Is it God or is it me?”

Priest: “I don’t know.”

 

It ends up being God, and Fleabag painfully realises this throughout the Priest’s speech at her fathers wedding. The Priest admits this to her. They both confess their love for each other, but Priest lets her know “It shall pass”. Is he saying this as a (incredibly clumsy) way to calm her? Is he saying it from experience? What we do know is that these two shared something really special. As the priest leaves her at the bus station, Fleabag sees a fox and sends him directly to the Priest. Foxes have been following the Priest around which is something that creeps him out as he doesn’t understand what they want from him. It’s similar to how the memory of what Fleabag did to Boo was following her around last season. Are foxes a metaphor for the Priest’s issues? If so, it seems like he still has some emotional baggage. Fleabag told her counsellor the Priest was in an unhealthy relationship: “the kind where one person tells the other what he is supposed to wear”. Funnily enough in the confession scene, she confesses to the priest however that that is what she is looking for: “I want someone to tell me what to wear every morning. I want someone to tell me what to eat. What to like, what to hate, what to rage about, what to listen to, what band to like, what to buy tickets for, what to joke about, what not to joke about. I want someone to tell me what to believe in, who to vote for, who to love and how to tell them.” Maybe this is the way Phoebe tells us this relationship was not healthy. Despite their real and important connection, they both have issues they need to deal with. Maybe it is healthier for them to be apart. Maybe that is also what God wanted to let them know? Or maybe the Priest just missed an opportunity to be with someone he loves and grow together, be better people together, for the first time in his (their) life.

 

Anyway, we will never know. As we start following Fleabag down the street, she turns to us and shakes her head no. We are not needed at this time. This is something she must deal with on her own. This love story with the priest was nice, but maybe it’s more important to start a love story with herself. We stay there and watch her walk away from us. Once again. This time, for the last time. 

 

 

You can watch “Fleabag” Seasons 1 & 2 on Amazon Prime Video.