Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers from Season 5 of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.The premiere ofThe Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’s final season introduced fans to a much longer timeline in Miriam Maisel’s (Rachel Brosnahan) life. Season 5’s main plot picks up just hours afterSeason 4left off. However, the new season includes a handful of scenes that take decades later, as well as some from the past.The time jumpsare an unexpected addition, as nothing similar occurred in the earlier seasons. Though, at first, this break from protocol seemed an odd choice, the glimpses into the future have their benefits. These scenes give a unique perspective on the life of Midge and her family, including lots of information that would have otherwise been a mystery.
Despite their brevity, the time-jump scenes paint a picture of the future and enable the series to explore Midge’s full story. These journeys to the future reveal a lot to the audience, establishing Midge’s success as a comedian and showing her relationship with her children as adults. These scenes also serve to drop tidbits about the characters' future lives. As various events are mentioned, not everything gets a specific date, but they give enough information to lay out a rough timeline of the Maisels' future.
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1953: Midge Meets Joel’s Parents
The show has shown Midge and Joel’s (Michael Zegen) early relationship before, but Season 5 takes the time to reveal a few new moments with them. Early in their relationship, Joel brings Midge to his father’s business, introducing her to Moishe (Kevin Pollak) and Shirley (Caroline Aaron). Instantly they like her, already bringing up children. Some of the employees mention another girl that Joel had shown around, much to Joel’s embarrassment, but obviously, Midge is the one who sticks, at least for a while. Joel reflects on this memory while he and Midge wait for a parent-teacher meeting at their son’s school, regretting their break-up.
1954: Joel Learns of the Weissman Genius
Before their wedding, Abe (Tony Shalhoub) meets with his future son-in-law to discuss the inevitable genius of their firstborn son. The Weissman family tradition requires fathers to ignore their sons for five years until the staggering intellect kicks in. Abe informs Joel of the tradition, as it’s applicable despite their future son’s name being Maisel. He even proudly shows off a book of family history with the accomplishments of his relatives. Joel is skeptical of Abe’s instructions, as he has a right to be. In the main show, Abe struggles with the fact that Ethan (Colin Keane) doesn’t have the anticipated genius but discovers that Esther (Ireland and Sedona Carvajal) does, leading toa change of heart in Abe.
1955: Dinner with Joel’s Friends
After their marriage, Midge and Joel attempt to keep up with Joel’s friends, but the ride home devolves into a fight over staying out too late. Joel blames Midge, resulting in her getting out of the cab and trying to walk home. They argue in the street before coming to an understanding. While this isn’t a particularly serious argument, it proves their marriage was never perfect as Joel weaponized Midge’s lack of a job. This memory is what Midge reflects on while waiting for the meeting with Ethan’s school as if convincing herself that she and Joel never worked.
1958: Joel Asks Out Penny Pan
In the final flashback, Joel remembers the beginning of the end of his marriage as he asks Penny Pan (Holly Curran) out for a drink after work. This is nearing the beginning of the show, set in the same year as the first season, but it is a moment that wasn’t on screen before. While it’s not clear exactly what was going on between Midge and Joel at that point in time, it clearly wasn’t ideal.
1958-1961: The Main Show
While Season 1 began in 1958, the show has continued chronologically with only small gaps, but time has progressed quickly. Season 4 reached the year 1961, which is where Season 5 begins. Most of the season is set in this timeframe, continuing the plots from the previous episodes. The Season starts the morning after Midge’s ill-advised walk in a snowstorm that concluded Season 4. Susie (Alex Borstein) arrives at the apartment to translate for a sick Midge. Soon Midge recovers from her hypothermia, returning to her struggling career but with a new determination. She gets a job writing forThe Gordon Ford Show, where she faces many complications. Her jokes aren’t chosen, the other writers don’t like her, and Gordon Ford (Reid Scott) likes her too much. But Midge continues to fight against the odds to rebuild her career, which the time jumps prove to be a worthwhile endeavor.
1961-1962: Susie Embraces the Mob
As Susie’s friends and coworkers reflect on her career, they tell many stories, One of which claims that in the early years of her career, Susie embraced the mob more than most showbiz people, which helped her get ahead. This story includes an incident where Susie’s assistant, Dinah (Alfie Fuller), was beaten by her boyfriend. After trying to cheer her up and sending her home for the day, Susie sends mobsters Frank (Erik Palladino) and Nicky (John Scurti) after the (now ex) boyfriend. While this isn’t a reliable story, it’s certainly possible. Susie used Frank and Nicky often. This is only one example of Susie’s involvement with the mob, but it’s no surprise. This plot line runs throughout Season 5, causing Joel’s eventual arrest andMidge and Susie’s falling out.
1963: Harry Drake’s Client
Another story during Susie’s Testi-Roastial is about Susie’s loyalty to her old friend Harry Drake (David Paymer). When one of his clients seeks Susie out, looking for a change in management, she viciously turns him down while praising Drake’s work. Susie has a tumultuous friendship with Drake, but she respects him too much to steal his clients.
Sometime After 1963: Harry Drakes’s Death
While the exact date isn’t given, everyone agrees that Susie was there when Harry Drake died. But they can’t agree on how it happened. Somehow, Susie ended up with several of Drake’s biggest clients. One suggests she refused to let anyone in and blackmailed her way into those clients, while others say she cut a deal with Drake’s daughter. But the final, and most in-character, story shows Harry abandoned by his family while Susie remains by his side. In this version, he gives over the clients willingly while still lucid because he trusts her. But however it happened, Susie got several major clients,sending her career to the next level.
1970: Susie’s Triple Crown
As Susie comes into her own as an agent, there is one legendary story that her peers speak of with reverence: the day she closed three deals in one golf trip. She sells a movie no one wanted by cornering one industry executive, and no one knows how she managed it. But instead of leaving then, she found the new head of CBS and pitched a show she made up on the spot, which went on to run for seven years. She even used names that were not signed on and weren’t her clients yet. After hearing of the show, they agreed to let Susie represent them. Afterward, she got the caddies to tell her who else was there, and she proceeded to meet with an ANM Records employee and get a recording contract forTim RiceandAndrew Lloyd Webber. After ten years, Susie certainly knew what she was doing.
1971: Midge’s Carnegie Hall Show
One future scene shows an interview with Midge, including a reflection on the significant moments of her career. This scene fills in a lot of blanks, but few are given specific dates. Yet the most notable event discussed is a show at Carnegie Hall, which they stated to take place in 1971. This fact indicates that only ten years after the main story of Season 5, Midge gained enough fame to perform as a headliner at Carnegie Hall. That knowledge in itself proves her eventual success in the not-too-distant future. But the clip gives more information about this particular show. Her all-important Carnegie Hall show didn’t go smoothly. With an aging audience, Midge was determined to shock people. This infamous show could have ended her career, but it worked in her favor, beginning a new chapter in her career.
