The key draw of Prime Video’s Dead Ringers is Rachel Weisz’s dual role as identical twins Beverly and Elliot Mantle, the same names as when Jeremy Irons played them in David Cronenberg’s 1988 film of the same name. The series takes the basic idea behind Cronenberg’s film — twin gynecologists who have a lot of sex, some of it rather unsettling — and spins it out into a six-hour story line with themes of jealousy, control, the amoral arrogance of the one percent, and vaginas. (This series is obsessed with vaginas.)
These motifs surface as part of a story line in which the Mantles go into business with billionaire Rebecca Parker (Jennifer Ehle), the heir to a prescription-opioid empire, as a practical means to an idealistic end for the opening of their dream birthing center. Beverly aims to change childbirth from a medicalized process that kills women to a holistic one that empowers them. Her sister has, let’s say, more Frankensteinian ambitions, beginning with the illegal embryos she is secretly growing in her lab.
Dead Ringers also gives Weisz’s horny online fan base what it craves, having her deliver a line about “putting [her] tongue on [her sister’s] tongue and inside her cunt” within the first five minutes of the first episode. Weisz plays each of the Mantle twins differently, going big for drug-abusing wild card Elliot while keeping her body language modest for shy Beverly. The easiest and most consistent way to tell them apart is their hairstyles: Wild Elliot literally lets her hair down, while conservative Beverly wears hers in a chignon.
Even so, it’s sometimes hard to tell the two Weiszes apart — especially when they’re split up — and decipher why they do what they do. Which of the twins starts going to church midway through the series? (It’s not the one you’d think.) And which Mantle is sharing her feelings about the death of her sister at those support-group meetings? (That one’s a bit more complicated!) So let’s break down the story from each Mantle sister’s perspective and see if we can get to the bottom of what they were up to.
Warning: Deep spoilers for every episode of Dead Ringers lie ahead.
Episode One
The Basics: The Mantle twins are Manhattan’s most successful and notorious obstetricians. Their dream of opening their own birthing center is about to come true thanks to an angel investment from Rebecca Parker.
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Elliot
What she’s up to: After a (quite graphic!) sequence of a day in the life delivering babies, Elliot does a bump in the bathroom at the hospital before heading out to the club, where she’s interrupted having sex with a guy in a bathroom stall by her sister. A few scenes later, Elliot and her assistant, Tom (Michael Chernus), discuss what might happen (wink) if Elliot were to hypothetically (wink, wink) keep a fertilized embryo alive in their lab longer than the legal 14-day limit. The unethical doctoring continues when Elliot nudges a pregnant patient’s husband to show her his penis — “Thank you so much, Max. That was actually a huge disappointment,” she says — and the twins pull a switcheroo when Beverly is overwhelmed by her attraction to TV star Genevieve (Britne Oldford). Elliot trades places with Beverly midway through the exam and texts her sister afterward that “[Genevieve’s] got the most extraordinary uterus.” Still pretending to be Beverly, she meets Genevieve at a bar and makes the first move.
Both Elliot and Beverly go to dinner with Rebecca to talk about investing in their birthing center, after which Elliot meets up with a guy before going home and smelling Genevieve’s panties while crawling on the twins’ kitchen island. The next morning, Elliot introduces herself to a shell-shocked Genevieve and is so annoyed at Beverly’s happiness about the hookup that she freaks out in a bathroom stall about it. (Elliot spends a lot of time in bathroom stalls.)
But why?: As the series opens, Elliot is her usual confident, voracious, possessive self. “My sister says I’m a hungry person. I like to feast,” she says. One thing she does not like to do is share control over her sister with other people, which is why she’s so jealous of Beverly’s budding relationship with Genevieve.
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Beverly
What she’s up to: She’s in the bathroom, having a miscarriage and talking to the clump of cells. Later on, she scrolls through childbirth photos on her phone while her sister parties. Her bad day turns around when she meets Genevieve, a TV actress who comes in for a fertility check; though Beverly is too flustered to follow through with the exam, her sister has promised to “get her for [her].” During a dinner at which they discuss the potential investment in their birthing center, Beverly takes offense to Rebecca’s disinterest and gives an impassioned speech about the horrors of the birthing system, convincing Rebecca to consider investing. With her confidence boosted, after dinner Beverly goes to the hotel where Genevieve has just finished up a press day and takes “the actress” home with her (as herself this time).
Toward the end of the episode, Dead Ringers flashes forward. (Or does it?!?!) In one of the series’ most confusing scenes, one of the twins introduces herself and says, “I’m here because my sister died. My twin.” We later find out this is Beverly.
But why?: At this point, Beverly is beaten down emotionally, both because her attempts to conceive are not working and because her sister controls everything about her life. She’s timid and relies on the more outgoing Elliot to do the things she can’t, like flirt with — or perform a pelvic exam on — Genevieve. Beverly’s speech at dinner in this episode is the first time she shows any agency (a sign of a growing backbone, perhaps?).
Quintessential Twin-ism:
Beverly: “She’s a patient. You can’t fuck the patients.”
Elliot: “Fine, I won’t fuck the patients … anymore.”
Episode Two
The Basics: The twins head upstate for a weekend at Rebecca’s compound, where they meet her crowd of eccentric hangers-on. Beverly and Genevieve’s relationship is developing, and Elliot doesn’t like being left out.
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Elliot
What she’s up to: After the cold open, we see Elliot watching dispassionately as the FDA raids Tom’s lab for having embryos in storage that are older than the legal 14-day limit. Oops! From there, we flash forward to the end of the weekend at Rebecca’s — Elliot’s the one in the robe. We then jump back to the beginning, when a resentful Elliot throws Beverly’s presentation out the window of the car on the way to Rebecca’s place. The twins spend much of the evening together until Elliot puts her sister in a wheelbarrow and locks her in a room with a sack over her head, as part of the “game” before having weird sex with a new acquaintance.
But why?: Elliot is pissed about Beverly’s new relationship. She cannot stand seeing Beverly happy without her and wolfs down in the car on the way to Rebecca’s to soothe her overwhelming feelings of jealousy. (Elliot binge-eats when she’s overwhelmed.) She sets out to sabotage the dinner as petty revenge until she realizes that these are “her people,” promising edgy experiments to their potential donors as a way to salvage the deal — and reassert her place as the dominant twin.
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Beverly
What she’s up to: After the flashback — in which she’s the one in the gray T-shirt with the ponytail — Beverly has loud sex with Genevieve in her bedroom while Elliot mopes in the kitchen. During dinner at Rebecca’s, she gets her period and has a long talk with Rebecca’s wife, Susan (Emily Meade), about Susan’s difficulties conceiving. She’s in bed when Elliot comes to capture her for the “game” and escapes by crawling through the ventilation ducts of the house. She tells off Rebecca, calling her and her friends “categorically the worst people.” The next morning, she changes her mind and humbles herself for the sake of the center and accepts Rebecca’s funding.
But why?: Beverly is put off by the billionaires, who make fun of her for caring about equality and accessibility. She gets so angry she almost fumbles the deal, but ultimately she’s the one who calls Rebecca to accept the offer. She downplays a question about having kids and refuses to tell Elliot why — another sign of her growing desire for independence from her sister.
Quintessential Twin-ism:
Elliot: “You all drilled holes in your skulls! It’s nuts! I love it.”
Episode Three
The Basics: The Mantle-Parker birthing center is open for business, but Beverly and Genevieve’s relationship is putting pressure on Elliot’s psyche.
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Elliot
What she’s up to: After watching her sister in bed with Genevieve, Elliot goes to her lab to satisfy her need for control over Beverly (or, at least, her genetic materials) before going to the opening party for their new birthing center, at which she downs a whole tray of martinis. The next day, she demonstrates an experimental procedure designed to delay menopause. The rich middle-aged women paying for everything love it.
Later, Elliot causes a scene at Genevieve’s wrap party but is helpful when she and Beverly rush back to the center for an emergency birth. Then Genevieve and Beverly leave for a romantic weekend and Elliot loses it. She gets drunk at her lab, then goes to a bar, then takes the whole bar back for a party at her apartment, which she trashes with an unhoused woman named Agnes (Susan Blommaert), who may or may not be real. Elliot hopes she isn’t real because she pushed Agnes off their balcony.
But why?: Elliot is feeling right. Feeling confident. Feeling enabled by Rebecca’s “rational self-interest” shtick … until Beverly decides to take advice from Genevieve and spend some time away from her. Fearing the loss of control over the only relationship that has ever mattered to her, Elliot lets her self-destructive impulses take over until she’s slapping herself in the face and screaming.
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Beverly
What she’s up to: Beverly brings Genevieve to the gala as her date, and the two snuggle and look very happy together. Afterward, they go back to Genevieve’s, where Beverly meets Genevieve’s little brother. A protester dumps a bucket of cow blood and organs on Beverly (Rebecca is a dick about it, as usual). Elliot also gives her shit, but Beverly stays calm and shows an excellent bedside manner with a patient who doesn’t want to be touched.
After the emergency birth, Beverly exits the narrative (on a romantic weekend with Genevieve) until the end of the episode, when she returns after Elliot calls her in a panic.
But why?: Beverly is uneasy with Rebecca’s laissez-faire attitude toward medical ethics and wonders aloud if it’s all worth it. “I’m struggling,” she tells Elliot. She’s keeping secrets from Elliot for the first time in the sisters’ lives, which is partly a passive-aggressive move toward independence and partly going along with Genevieve’s distrust of Elliot.
Quintessential Twin-ism:
Tom: “What the fuck have you done?”
Elliot: “You don’t want to know.”
Episode Four
The Basics: The Mantles’ surprisingly normal parents visit New York. We see flashbacks of the twins’ infancy, when their mother struggled with her ambivalence about parenting.
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Elliot
What she’s up to: The bad twin, Ellie avoids Bev and their parents for most of the episode. Bev gives Ellie pills and puts her to bed, showing how their roles have reversed now that Beverly is in a stable relationship and is no longer emotionally dependent on Elliot. Ellie still loves to fuck with people, though, and surprises Genevieve in the shower, which upsets Genevieve and causes her to storm out.
Elliot does join her family to watch “the show,” after which she binge-eats taffy while watching TV. She overhears Beverly and Genevieve talking and flips into doctor mode when she realizes that Beverly has “betrayed” her by getting pregnant without Elliot’s help.
At church, Elliot reconnects with a guy from a previous episode who turns out to be a famous politician. She brings him to her and Bev’s birthday dinner, during which she ruins everything before absconding to her lab, where she reveals her mad-scientist plan to Tom.
But why?: She’s getting closer to the edge all the time, consumed by her confusion over “killing” Agnes and her ongoing anxiety about “losing” Beverly. She snuggles up to their dad and ignores their mom; when asked if she’s okay, she says “no” and stumbles away. She oscillates between mania and depression and has started attending church when feeling low. Toward the end of the episode, she regains all-important control over her sister by blabbing Bev’s secrets as revenge for her “betrayal.”
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Beverly
What she’s up to: The dutiful twin, Bev spends much of the episode visiting with their parents during their trip. She goes to work in the daytime and then hangs out with them at night, watching “the show,” which is a TV series based on Cronenberg’s 1977 independent body-horror film Rabid. Now that she’s pregnant, she and Genevieve begin planning a life together … without Elliot.
In a flash-forward (… or?), she tells her support group about a dream (or is it a memory?) in which she’s in a rowboat on a lake and can’t find her sister. At the same meeting, she refers to talking to Elliot “in my head,” suggesting this whole series has been a Sixth Sense thing. (It’s not.)
After the disastrous birthday dinner, Beverly does an ultrasound on herself — it’s twins!
But why?: Being around their parents makes Beverly feel anxious and guilty. She insists it hasn’t been years since they’ve seen one another. (It has.) Even though she’s pregnant, she’s smoking and makes a baby sound before lighting up. It all feeds into her nihilistic belief that she’s inadequate and doomed to fail as a mother (her mother telling her “You’re going to be a terrible mother, Beverly,” probably doesn’t help), as badly as she wants to be one. And she’s down bad after Elliot reveals the episode-one switcheroo that led to Beverly and Genevieve’s relationship and Genevieve storms out.
Quintessential Twin-ism:
Elliot: “Our cunts and our tongues are identical, so what does it fucking matter?”
Episode Five
The basics: The Mantle twins go to Alabama to open a new birthing center in Susan’s hometown. There, they meet Susan’s family, and everything goes wrong.
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Elliot
What she’s up to: In a bloody flash-forward, we learn that Elliot’s turn toward domesticity — making smoothies, listening to meditation tapes, getting a dog! — will be temporary. She tells Silas (Ntare Mwine), the writer doing a profile on them, that she has quit drinking and drugs (a lie).
Elliot takes the lead with Susan’s creepy eugenicist family. She slugs some booze with Silas before delivering quadruplets at the birthing center, botching the procedure by puncturing the mother’s bladder during a C-section.
But why?: As the episode opens, Elliot feels good because her sister is emotionally dependent on her again now that Genevieve is gone. By the end of the episode, she’s lying on Susan’s dad’s driveway and swerving all over the road in Silas’s rental car — all because Bev is distancing herself from her once again. (She insists on driving despite her unstable mental state because Elliot can never not be in control.)
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Beverly
What she’s up to: At this point, telling Beverly and Elliot apart becomes significantly easier, as Beverly’s pregnancy starts to show. On the surface, everything seems fine: The Mantle-Parker empire is growing, and though Genevieve is barely speaking to her after Elliot revealed that it was she, not Bev, who made the first move back in episode one, having Elliot around fulfills Beverly’s emotional needs. (At least that’s what she says.)
In Alabama, Beverly throws up all over the dinner table. Late that night, she sees a vision of a woman who tells her the real story of the enslaved 17-year-old girl tortured by the doctor Susan’s dad, Marion (Michael McKean), praised at dinner. (The doctor from the story is a reference to J. Marion Sims, the “father of modern gynecology,” who conducted horrific research on enslaved Black women.) Still, she sticks with Rebecca, Susan, and the money. There’s no going back this time.
But why?: Bev is suppressing her emotions the way only the British can, biting herself on the arm to keep feelings from escaping. At first, she’s trying to forget about Genevieve — “I have to pretend she never existed,” she tells Silas — but by the end of the episode, it’s Elliot she leaves behind. “I’ve left her. She doesn’t exist,” she tells Genevieve.
Quintessential Twin-ism:
Elliot: “We’re going to be parents.”
Beverly: “I’m having twins. One and two.”
Elliot: “Two little babies, Silas.”
Episode Six
The Basics: Elliot and Beverly’s sibling breakup is too much for both of them, leading to a shocking escalation in their games of mistaken identity.
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Elliot
What she’s up to: Elliot is in exile after the botched C-section from the previous episode. Eating alone in the diner, fucking the dumpy guy from the first episode, and not feeling a single thing. Lying in bed and calling Bev over and over. Once Beverly gives in and the two reunite at the birthing center, Elliot slices herself across the abdomen to mimic a C-section scar before cutting her sister open and reaching up inside her uterus with an unwashed, ungloved hand. Now she’s “Beverly” and can be the mommy and the mad scientist.
But why?: Beverly choosing a romantic relationship over her relationship with Elliot was one thing, but Beverly distancing herself from her sister professionally is too much for Elliot to handle. Elliot can no longer be seen — at least publicly — at the Mantle-Parker birthing center, and her mental health is destroyed by this loss of purpose in her life. She hasn’t changed out of her scrubs from the previous episode, is numbing herself with booze and online shopping, and is sleeping on the floor of her lab.
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Beverly
What she’s up to: Beverly is back with Genevieve, but they still have the same fight about Elliot. The center is making money, the patients are happy, and she has everything she ever wanted — yet she still feels empty. Then Rebecca asks her to “destroy” her sister to save all of their reputations before Silas’s profile publishes. She complies, calling Ellie “abusive and destructive” in an awards speech.
Still, she misses Elliot and returns to the apartment to smell her sister’s sheets. When they reunite, Beverly is delighted by her sister’s “gift” of two new genetically engineered Bevs, and, long story short, Beverly asks Elliot to kill her and take her place. She dies bleeding out on an operating table.
In a mid-credits sequence, we finally find out what was happening with those support-group meetings in the faux flash-forwards. For two years before her death, Beverly had been secretly attending grief counseling, where she processed her desire to be free from her twin by talking about Elliot as if she were dead. Elliot had no idea any of this was happening and is shocked to hear that Beverly had a real secret (unlike the pregnancy, which she sniffed out right away). As a final gesture of control over her sister, Elliot/“Beverly” starts going to the support-group meetings in her stead.
But why?: Bev can’t get Ellie out of her mind. She keeps flashing back to the bloody clump in the toilet and hears Elliot’s voice whispering, “Baby sister, baby sister.” That’s in her head, but the insistent buzzing of her phone is real. She’ll never escape Elliot and will never be happy as a result. Seeing no other way out, she submits to her sister’s desire for ultimate control by allowing her to kill her and take over her life.
Quintessential Twin-ism:
Beverly: “I have to climb inside of you now. There was only supposed to be one of us. You were always the better me.”
