Animal Kingdom season 3 finale review: J breaks badder

The Animal Kingdom season 3 finale brought a ton of intrigue, drama, and surprisingly sex to the table. (Seriously, how much of that was in this episode?) Ultimately, this wasn’t a finale that was really about establishing some sort of enormous life-or-death cliffhanger. It was pretty clear that the writers didn’t want to just repeat what they did at the end of last season. (Yet, we did see Lucy gunned down, which is certainly one of the most dramatic moments of the entire season.)

Yet, with that in mind we did get a pretty compelling tease of what’s to come at the end of the episode, mostly due to the promise that J made to Smurf in the closing minutes: He is ready to destroy his grandmother once and for all, and he’s willing to do everything he can to make that happen.

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This entire episode was largely a chess match between the two after Smurf started to realize exactly what J was doing when it comes to some of her holdings — Morgan was a patsy that he tried to pin most of it on, which led in turn to her death. Yet, Smurf is smart, and maybe J underestimated her ability to really figure that out as quickly as she did. Her decision to hand down many of the family’s properties to all of her boys at the end of the episode was not a move that she made out of charity; instead, it was one that she made out of a desire to keep most of her power in a different way. J isn’t going to be able to operate the same way with the likes of Deran and Craig and he knows that; he also knows that she’s onto him and he’s ready to get vengeance in his own way.

Granted, J has some other problems now as well, whether it be via what’s going on with Mia or just the typical complications that go with the territory of his job.

So what other questions are you left to wonder after this finale? For starters, it’s fair to wonder if there’s anything left between Craig and Frankie after it feels rather clear that she used him — which really shouldn’t come as that big of a shock. Meanwhile, Deran’s boyfriend Adrian found himself picked up at the airport in what was very much a setup of its own, which serves as yet another reminder that none of these guys seem to ever be fully capable of love. That seemed to be the message that the writers were sending with all of the sex in this episode — it’s all fleeting for them and it’s impossible for them to have anything permanent with the way they live their lives. There’s really no better indication of this than Smurf calling in a prostitute for Pope so that he could let off a little bit of steam.

Related – When could season 4 of Animal Kingdom premiere?

CarterMatt Verdict

While the Animal Kingdom season 3 finale was not particularly shocking by any means, it did do a rather-excellent job of establishing where some of these characters are — let alone how their constant thirst for power and money will probably leave all of them alone in the end.

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