All hail the House of Evangelista. After three seasons, Ryan Murphy and Steven Canals‘s groundbreaking FX series Pose, about the 1980s New York’s uptown ball scene, has thrown its final ball. In the series finale, Pose found a way to send off its cast primarily comprised of Black trans and queer performers in a legendary and heartfelt way.
Co-written by Murphy, Canals, Brad Falchuk, Janet Mock, and Our Lady J, the two-part series finale sees the show’s fierce patriarch, Pray Tell—aka Pray, played by the Emmy and Tony-winning Billy Porter—in dire straights as he grows increasingly ill due to complications from HIV/AIDS. Pray checks himself into the hospital, much to Blanca’s (MJ Rodriguez) consternation. Right when Pray has lost all hope, Blanca, with the help of her doctor love interest Christopher (Jeremy Pope) and Nurse Judy (Sandra Bernhard), is able to convince the head of the hospital to admit Pray and, eventually, herself into a potentially life-saving medical trial for individuals suffering with HIV/AIDS that has been largely closed off to the Black and Latino communities.
After months participating in the trial with promising results, Pray sneaks some of his trial drugs to his protégé Ricky (Dyllón Burnside), who reveals a growing lesion to Pray. Pray joins forces with the House of Evangelista and the grassroots political organization ACT UP to protest pharmaceutical companies for denying access to life-saving medication. This protest brings them back to the ball, where Pray and Blanca perform a show-stopping lip sync to “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” Pray returns home, and removes his makeup and fake eyelashes as Aretha Franklin’s “I Say a Little Prayer” as he prepares for bed for the very last time. The next day Ricky comes over to Pray’s apartment and finds that Pray has passed away in the night, leaving Ricky all of his medication.
Last month, Porter revealed to The Hollywood Reporter that he has been HIV positive for fourteen years, saying that while he’s now the healthiest he’s ever been, he kept his diagnosis a secret for fear of being discriminated against in the industry. “I was trying to have a life and a career, and I wasn’t certain I could if the wrong people knew,” said Porter. On Twitter Sunday, Pose creator Canals wrote of the strength and bravery it took for Porter to play Pray Tell. “As a Black gay man living with HIV i asked him to play a character facing his mortality,” Canals wrote, of Porter. “And NEVER ONCE did he push back and say, ”I won’t do that.”
After Pray Tell’s death, Blanca assembles Pray Tell’s loved ones together to share his final words. The show then jumps ahead to 1998, where Blanca is a registered nurse and married to Christopher—and, in a full circle moment from the series premiere, counseling patients through their own HIV diagnoses. Blanca, Angel (Indiya Moore), Elektra (Dominique Jackson), and Lulu (Hailie Sahar) meet for drinks, appropriately drag Sex and the City for being too white, and reflect on their past and future, each of them living out the real version of their ballroom fantasies. The series ends with one final kiki reuniting all the original members of The Evangelistas, as a new hopeful shows up ready to begin her ballroom journey. “Welcome to the House of Evangelista,” Blanca says. Tens across the board.
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