‘FEUD: Capote Vs. The Swans’ Ending Explained: Did Truman Capote Finish ‘Answered Prayers’?

The penultimate episode of FEUD: Capote Vs. The Swans powerfully depicted the deaths of Truman Capote (Tom Hollander) and Babe Paley (Naomi Watts). Just when you thought the legendary writer and his best friend were gone, however, FEUD‘s finale turned back the clock to fill in some crucial missing pieces.

FX’s official synopsis for FEUD: Capote Vs. The Swans Episode 8, “Phantasm Forgiveness” — written by Jon Robin Baitz and directed by Gus Van Sant — reads, “Past, present and future collide as Truman makes a final push to finish Answered Prayers.”

The emotional finale gives viewers a more intimate look at Truman’s childhood and his toxic relationship with his mother. It shows his hopes for Answered Prayers and his ideal resolution with the swans — that phantasm forgiveness. And it offers glimpses of his unglamorous final year, spent battling substance abuse and haunting regrets.

Curious how the second installment in Ryan Murphy’s FEUD anthology series concludes? Decider’s FEUD: Capote Vs. The Swans Episode 8 recap breaks down the finale.

FEUD: Capote Vs. The Swans Ending Explained: Episode 8 Recap, “Phantasm Forgiveness”

The finale of FEUD‘s second installment opens in 1984, the year of Truman Capote’s death. After Episode 7 ended with Truman’s final hour, Episode 8 rewinds to show him bringing a bouquet of flowers to Babe’s grave, sitting, and talking to her. The fresh glimpse at Truman in the aftermath of Babe’s death reveals he’s three months sober, but he tells Babe he may be joining her before too long, asking, “Let me in?”

The next scene shows Truman outside Jack’s apartment asking the same question. Jack is reluctant to welcome Truman to his home until his partner, Nick, appears behind him and invites Truman to stay for dinner. Jack allows it, and Truman spends the meal updating Jack on his sobriety and Answered Prayers, which he claims will be his apology to all the people he hurt with “La Côte Basque.” Jack asks what happens if no one forgives him, and Truman says, “Apologies, when heartfelt, matter…People want both to forgive and to be forgiven.” When Truman leaves, he asks for forgiveness for what he’s done and hugs Jack goodbye.

It’s a new day and Truman is staring at a nearly empty cupboard. He plates a Pop-Tart only to toss it in the trash and start writing about the closing of La Côte, with all his fictional characters in attendance — the “victims” of P.B. Jones’ indiscretions, as he calls them. On Truman’s pages, P.B. Jones meets Kiki (C.Z.) for a last supper and apologizes for the Esquire article. “You cheapened the nuance of our lives,” she says. “You understood how imprisoned I felt in my life. Trapped. And what you wrote didn’t acknowledge any of that. It was a two-dimensional cave scratching, saying we ate, we fucked, we drank, and god — we hated each other.” P.B. tells her it may be too late, but he has one small thing he could offer…

Furiously scribbling words down at his desk, Truman tells the tale of P.B. Jones taking a road trip with Kiki to “set free the spirit of that goddess in the gilded cage.” The farther they drive, the more she softens, letting the wind whip through her hair, carefree and happy, like the old days. They pull into a New Mexico bar, sell the bartender her nude painting for the price of two whiskeys, and toast to late freedom. Back at his desk, Truman lifts his pen to take a break, walks into the kitchen with his draft, and asks his mother Nina — rather, his hallucination of her — what she thinks.

“I don’t know. It’s out of character for you,” she says. “More of your juvenilia. Frilly. The kind of stuff you used to pound out before you find your voice.” She laughs and hands him her glass, urging him to drink. Truman declines, saying he’s on the wagon, but she insists and he gives in, saying, “That’s funny, the drink. How it helps. Now your criticisms don’t sting like a wasp. I can barely feel them anymore.” As he continues their conversation, Nina is nowhere to be found. Truman sits at his desk talking to himself and launches into his Lady Ina Coolbirth update, describing her as a washed up, lonely, bitter woman with “the venom drained out of her” who desperately wanted love, power, or security again.

When Ina notices P.B. Jones following her on the sidewalk, she epically curses him out as he attempts to apologize. The cathartic outburst tires her out enough to invite him home, where he learns she’s moving to a one-bedroom cottage in Santa Barbara. She tells him he tore down her dreams and ambitions, and the two take their frustrations out by tossing her pricey plates at the wall. “I know exactly what you need — to be the special one for once,” he says, handing her an invite to her own Black and White Ball. Per Truman’s pen, it was even more successful than his first and helped Coolbirth find the love story she was always denied.

Outside of his pages, Truman runs his latest words by his mother and they fight about his upbringing. A flashback shows young Truman locked out of his mother’s bedroom, begging her to open the door. She asks her suitor to run down to the lobby to get some smokes, then scolds Truman, who says he doesn’t like the man and just wants life to be the two of them. Nina reminds her son their life costs money, which she’s trying to secure with the romantic relationship. She blames his existence for her past failed relationships, calls him “a sideshow attraction,” and reveals the lie she tells men: She’s watching her nephew for her wayward sister. Young Truman visibly internalizes her harsh words, and stays locked away in silence while she canoodles with her man. With a fresh understanding of the trauma Truman carried into adulthood, we return to present-day, where his vision of Nina hands him another drink and some pills, and tells him to gets back to work. Truman writes that P.B. Jones walks back into La Côte and sits down with Lee and her “famously gay” husband. He gives her a copy of her memoir, and says, “It’ll be as if you wrote it…I know you wanted literary credibility.” He also offers to help her ditch her husband, which really wins Lee over. They head to his apartment and plan to poison her husband using nicotine, which proves successful on the page.

Back in reality, Truman wakes up with his face on his typewriter and his mother standing above him telling him the book isn’t working. “You are not in touch with your hatred,” she says. “So write about my suicide. Why is that so hard for you? You were in your late 20s when I did it. You weren’t a baby… That’s the story you should tell. The story of the Black Swan.”

A flashback shows a man walking out on Nina and admitting infidelity. Truman sits on a couch nearby, overhearing the argument. Beside him sits Ann Woodward, dressed in all black, as a reminder that her overdose death — also believed to be a suicide — haunts him just like his mother’s does. “She’s getting ready. I can smell it. I know this scene. Oh boy. I hope you’re prepared,” Ann tells him. Nina takes a bottle of pills from her purse and downs a handful. “You told me that of all of your swans, of which I was only an honorary member, that I was the one that reminded you most of your mother,” Ann tells Truman as he looks on in horror. “…Maybe that’s why you were so cruel to me.”

As his mother dies before him, Truman asks Ann if she ever forgave him for what he wrote about her. “Never,” she says. “There are some things that (mother dies) are beyond forgiveness. “And the others won’t forgive you either if you publish the finished Answered Prayers — even if you think you’re being kind, it’ll just make it worse. Those friendships died with Côte Basque, the golden age of society, which you helped kill”. Perhaps it was subconscious — the final gift to your mother, and yourself, for never truly feeling like you belonged.”

Back at his desk, Truman knows what he has to do. He drives to a lake, watches swans — one of them black — swimming, then fetches his Answered Prayers manuscript from the trunk and lights it on fire as his hallucination of Ann looks on, reminding him, “The book or your soul, it’s up to you. From there, FEUD takes viewers back to Episode 7’s storyline. Truman nearly drowns at Joanne’s house in California, she pulls him out of the water he briefly sees Ann and his mother laughing by the pool. Joanne cries by his side, and he utters his final words: “Mama it’s so cold. I’m so cold. How could this be California? Beautiful Babe.”

After Truman is gone, we see more of Joanne’s call with Jack. She tells him there’s no Answered Prayers left behind, revealing his notebook had “a dream, a dream, a dream, a dream that’s as real as stubbing your toe” written inside over and over. She agrees to plan the memorial and have Truman cremated like he wanted, then FEUD leaps forward to a 2016 auction where his ashes are being sold.

The price starts at $2,000, and Kate is in the audience, bidding until the cost get too high. The ashes sell for $45,000 to a mystery buyer in New York, and the ghosts of the swans — all wearing white — look on from the back of the room, discussing the downfall of society and mocking people’s pathetic auction attire.

The series ends with the women walking into a bright white light and Babe turning around for one last look at Truman’s ashes. Before the end credits roll, FEUD tells viewers, “Slim Keith died in 1990. C.Z. Guest died in 2003. Joanne Carson died in 2015. Lee Radziwill died in 2019. The manuscript of Answered Prayers has never been found.” We’ve got more on the real-life story on Answered Prayers here.