This article contains spoilers for The Gilded Age Season 4, Episode 2.
Things haven’t been going well for “Railroad Daddy” George Russell (Morgan Spector). His wife Bertha (Carrie Coon) is back in town after visiting their daughter in England last episode, and he’s still angry at her for forcing Gladys to marry the Duke of Buckingham (although they do share a kiss in George’s office). Oil magnate John D. Rockefeller (Neal Huff) has also gotten on George’s nerves after trying to lowball him in a deal between Russell Industries and Standard Oil.
But most importantly, Mr. Russell is out for revenge after last season’s assassination attempt.
Episode 2 of The Gilded Age Season 4 begins with agents of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency and George storming into the home of his shooter, Will Morris (Will Pullen), and his mother, Anne (Katie Finneran).
We last saw Mrs. Morris in Season 1, when her husband’s business scheme against George failed and drove him to suicide. With the loss, the family had been forced to live modestly, which prompted Will to shoot George. Now, he’s at the mercy of Mr. Russell and the Pinkertons — who weren’t cops but certainly operated like a special police force for the wealthy industrialists at that time.
His son, Larry Russell (Harry Richardson), has a problem of his own with his ex-fiancée, Marian Brook (Louisa Jacobson), who couldn’t shake off their night together (in a bad way). When they see each other, she tells him, “I cannot look at you without seeing my own shame.”
While Marian is conflicted with her feelings about Larry and herself, she spends most of her time pursuing the NINK life — no income, no kids — at the neighborhood settlement house as a volunteer. On the night shift, she encounters a little boy who’s been burned while working at a factory, which she finds unsettling.
Meanwhile, her aunt Agnes (Christine Baranski) is bitter that her other aunt Ada (Cynthia Nixon) has bought new curtains without tassels (how modern!) and hired a new footman, Oliver Keith (Taylor Trensch), but doesn’t want to fund the dinner she’s hosting for President Grover Cleveland.
To make things worse, the Heritage Society has also arranged for Agnes to appear at the Metropolitan Opera House — a place she had vowed never to set foot in because the Russells funded its construction — to meet a journalist who’s writing about the dinner.
There, she’s accompanied by fellow old money socialite Caroline “Lina” Astor (Donna Murphy), who finds the Met gaudy compared to the older, more established Academy of Music. They also meet the journalist, Louisa Knapp Curtis (Bonnie Milligan), who appears to take note of Lina and Agnes’ gossiping and calls the van Rhijn home “old-fashioned.”
Who’s Straining the Russell Marriage?
Mrs. Astor is also up to something. At the opera, she suggests to Bertha that George may be hiding something from her, as they’re never seen together anymore. But on the carriage back home, she tells her daughter Carrie (Amy Forsyth) that she should get acquainted with Larry, who, after getting dumped by Marian again, is still on the marriage market and has more promising financial prospects than her other suitors.
In Newport, Marian’s best friend, Peggy Scott (Denée Benton), and her mother, Dorothy (Audra McDonald), continue to deal with Peggy’s future mother-in-law, Elizabeth Kirkland (Phylicia Rashad). Mrs. Kirkland hosts a tea for the Daughters of Friendship, who don’t seem to welcome the idea of Peggy having published a fiction novel, as it was unheard of for Black women at the time. Elizabeth also lies about Peggy’s background to the other guests, believing that it would be less shameful to be a widow than to have gone through an annulment.
When she returns to New York, she finds groom-to-be Dr. William Kirkland (Jordan Donica) upset over a patient who had died of tuberculosis. William had brought the patient to a hospital for treatment, but the attending White doctor does not permit him to accompany the patient because he’s a Black doctor.
Back on Fifth Avenue, Mrs. Morris visits Bertha and begs her to have George spare Will. In the morning, Bertha asks her husband to take Will to the police instead, and to come home after informally separating from her and residing at the Union Club.
George, however, is dead set on making Will pay for nearly killing him. The Pinkertons take the Morrises to a dark warehouse, where Mr. Russell shows up drunk and with a pistol in hand. He tells the kid that when he was shot, “I saw my own life, and it was nothing,” and points the gun at him.
But instead of killing Will, he has the Morrises kicked out of the city. He then returns to the Russell estate and tells Bertha he doesn’t have a sense of direction and doesn’t know what he’s doing.
The Gilded Age Season 4 is available to stream on HBO Max.
Frequently Asked Questions
The episode follows George Russell as he confronts Will Morris, the man who attempted to assassinate him, while his marriage to Bertha grows increasingly strained. Meanwhile, Marian struggles with her feelings for Larry, Peggy faces opposition from her future mother-in-law, and Agnes adjusts to changes in her household.
No. Although George confronts Will Morris with a pistol and initially appears intent on killing him, he ultimately spares his life. Instead, George has Will and his mother, Anne, banned from New York.
George and Bertha are not formally divorced or permanently separated in Season 4, Episode 2. However, their marriage is under considerable strain following Bertha’s decision to arrange Gladys’ marriage to the Duke of Buckingham. George has also been staying at the Union Club rather than returning home.
Elizabeth Kirkland disapproves of Peggy’s career as a writer and her background as a woman who previously had a husband and a son. While her marriage to Elias Finn was forcibly annulled by her father due to Elias’s lack of social standing, her son was given up for adoption and died from scarlet fever.
George Russell and John D. Rockefeller are negotiating a potential business arrangement involving Russell’s railroad network and Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. Rockefeller wants to use Russell’s trains to transport his oil, but the two industrialists struggle to agree on a price.
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