Kate Winslet's Always Been 'One and Done' on HBO. Here's Why The Regime Should Be Different.

In the end, the autocracy at the heart of HBO’s The Regime didn’t crumble. Civil war didn’t destroy the populace of the unnamed central European country (R.I.P. to the 13,000 casualties along the way). And despite being forced out of her gilded cage and into the destruction she wrought, Chancellor Elena Vernham (Kate Winslet) didn’t even lose her throne.

[Note: This post discusses plot points from The Regime series finale, “Don’t Yet Rejoice.”]

In the finale of the supposedly limited series, Elena sacrificed her lover and political muscle Herbert Zubak (Matthias Schoenaerts) in order to retain her power, albeit with new puppeteers operating the strings of her reign. The business interests of the cobalt mines and the American politicians that sought to take control of them (led by Martha Plimpton’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair Judith Holt) gave Elena back her seat of power, with a few new shadowy checks and balances installed.

It all came to be because, even though she had been run out of her palace, the opposition behind the unrest recognized that the mere humble servant of the people, as Elena called herself, still held a great deal of sway over her supporters. Despite their best efforts and her worst impulses, the curated image of her on the throne was too powerful to dismantle.

In the series’s final moments, Elena celebrates her reelection with her husband Nicky (Guillaume Gallienne), and addresses hordes of citizens that still hold her in high regard. But the toll of the coup is unmistakable. She speaks from inside a glass box shielding her from outlying assassination attempts and her recurrent fear of germs. There’s also the matter of the perfectly preserved body of Zubak in the bowels of the palace, Elena’s sobering tether to the past — and an eerie reminder of how she used to keep her abusive dead father at her disposal as well.

While The Regime is billed as a limited series, the table-setting for Elena’s second act as chancellor provides, perhaps, the first real opportunity for the Oscar-nominated Winslet to revisit one of her television characters. Following the runaway success of her work in HBO’s 2021 limited series Mare of Easttown, for which she won an Emmy, Winslet has spent the intervening years dodging questions about whether or not her Philadelphia-suburb detective could return for another case. Previously, Winslet also won an Emmy for her role as Mildred Pierce in HBO’s 2011 miniseries remake.

The latter is a famously closed-ended story, but Mare of Easttown, at least in theory, could continue on — but should it? With a little time and distance, the answer to that question has increasingly and resoundingly become “no.” For a variety of reasons, some cases are just better left closed and the close-to-home search for a missing girl already became the professional and personal reckoning Mare needed. Reopening that journey, one marked by her son’s tragic death by suicide and the bitter sting of a failed marriage, would inherently pale compared to everything she went through in Season 1. And for what? So she can solve another heartbreaking case underscored by the class disparity of America’s small towns? There are so many other shows that can do that without diminishing the incredibly moving and thrilling story played out in the limited series. Plus, the series’s killer reveal (and shocking deaths) set a bar that would be hard to replicate.

But there is a case to be made for a second dose of Winslet’s volatile and pitch-perfect take on an unhinged dictator with Elena, who ends The Regime staring out at an uncertain new world. Elena’s brand of governing is well established as her way or the metaphorical highway – if the series were to consider shedding its limited characterization, one thing to explore could be how she will grow or, more likely, spiral now that there are entities looking over her shoulder. Would she learn to relinquish some of her control for the greater good, or would she resist the hooks in her by becoming an even more damaging threat to the future of her country?

Admittedly, the show has already explored what would happen if her divisive way of governing led to an uprising among her people. Could future episodes hand Elena the weapons to watch her try and destroy the forces that have caged her? They would have to, because series creator and writer Will Tracy can only storm the castle so many times before Elena stops flinching.

Perhaps the best argument for a Season 2, if there is one, would be to tell the story of Elena’s life after Zubak. What started out as recruiting yet another imposing bit of muscle to ward off any questions about her wilder inclinations became an undeniably intoxicating love affair for both of them. In the face of her many neuroses and fear of losing her kingdom, Elena found a stabilizing force in Zubak.

Yes, their courtship was a destructive force for the outside world, like a tornado that devastates everything it touches. We saw Elena’s relationship with the other men she treated as pawns, from her council to the late Edward Keplinger (the brilliantly cast Hugh Grant), the former political opponent she imprisoned and tormented. She doesn’t know how to connect with people without the promise of personal gain or cruel pleasure.

But Zubak was different. His unconditional love was the only genuine thing Elena could trust in the end, and sacrificing that kind of life support takes its toll. In the finale’s quietest and most profound moment, Elena lays in bed with Zubak talking about the feeling of failure and the love she has for him. It is her way of easing him and herself into the inevitability of his eventual assassination. But it is also her saying goodbye to the one real thing she has, perhaps, ever had.

If HBO were to commission a second season, mining Elena’s life post-Zubak should be its guiding light, because it would be the purest form of gauging whether anything has or can change who she is.

The finale leaves its rebounded leader in as much of a prison as a palace. Sure, she will likely tear down the bars of her confinement the first chance she gets. But The Regime has bigger things on its mind than just palace intrigue (including a density of plot that some found detrimental to its overall story). What has been undeniable in the series's somewhat shaky reception though is the praise for Winslet’s performance as Elena. That is reason enough to see what she can do with a story that leaves a little meat on the bone. If given the chance, Winslet may prove that a dictator can change their ways — even if that’s more of a fantasy than a reality.

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Hunter Ingram is a TV writer living in North Carolina and watching way too much television. His byline has appeared in Variety, Emmy Magazine, USA Today, and across Gannett's USA Today Network newspapers.