This article contains mild spoilers throughout Season 2 of Fleabag.

Fleabag doesn’t follow her older sister’s lead. The titular protagonist of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s ecstatic Amazon Prime series has mostly tripped her way into a chaotic, circuitous life path. The resolutely uptight Claire (played by Sian Clifford), by contrast, has forged a meticulous plan. The two sisters are almost uncannily different: Where Claire is propelled by a suffocating sense of duty to those around her, Fleabag (played by Waller-Bridge) struggles to show meaningful consideration to even those whom she most loves. By the end of the show’s devastating first season, the reckless antiheroine had alienated everyone in her life, and Claire was no exception.



But the show’s second and final season begins with a sign that Fleabag might be capable of bridging that gap. At the start of Episode 1, the sisters, having been forced to gather for a group dinner organized to celebrate their father’s engagement to their godmother, regard each other with uneasiness. “Nice jumpsuit,” Claire first says to Fleabag, the terse phrase more an accusation than a compliment. But late into the tumultuous dinner that animates the episode, Fleabag notices that her estranged sister has been missing from the table for a while. Rising from her seat, Fleabag heads to the restaurant bathroom to find Claire.



What begins as a lighthearted, if also vulgar, inquiry suddenly shifts into a gut-wrenching moment of unexpected connection. “Claire? You’ve been ages. Are you pissed off, or are you doing a poo?” Fleabag asks as she approaches Claire’s stall. After Claire requests a sanitary napkin, Fleabag opens the stall door and lightly mocks her about her period—until Claire corrects her through tears and gritted teeth: “It’s not a period. It’s a fucking miscarriage, okay?”

In its second season, Fleabag deepens its portrayal of the sisters’ relationship not by glossing over their past transgressions, but by allowing them to coexist alongside surprising moments of fierce protectiveness. Describing the miscarriage scene, which took seven hours to film, Clifford recently told Vulture, “There’s no question that they are there for each other. It’s such a beautiful representation of sisterhood. It’s like, Forget everything else, I will be here to support you.”



The show, acerbic as ever, doesn’t present a vision of “support” that suddenly finds Fleabag assuming the role of caretaker extraordinaire. Viewers would find it jarring to see her seamlessly cast off her own insecurities or adopt a near-parental posturing. Instead, Fleabag’s willingness to shock—to defy expectations of ladylike, responsible behavior—enables her to protect Claire. When the sisters return to the dinner table and Claire feigns enjoyment instead of expressing a need to go to the hospital, Fleabag interrupts the party’s hollow chatter: “Oh, for fuck’s sake, stop it!” she screams, then later offers an unanticipated reason for her anger when goaded: “I j … I just had a little ... I just … I had a … a little m-miscarriage.”