The Gilded Age Season 4 Episode 2 “You Won’t Hear Me Beg” finally reveals who tried to kill George Russell (Morgan Spector) last season on the HBO show — and it’s a character whose vendetta against the Russells started all the way back at the beginning of The Gilded Age Season 1.
**Spoilers for The Gilded Age Season 4 Episode 2 “You Won’t Hear Me Beg,” now streaming on HBO Max**
This week’s episode of The Gilded Age picks up where last week’s Season 4 premiere left off, with the Pinkertons and George Russell crashing a tenement building in pursuit of his would-be assassin. It turns out that Will Morris (Will Pullen) was behind the deadly Season 3 attack. Okay, but who is Will Morris? Well, we have to go all the way back to Season 1 to explain…
Who Tried to Kill George Russell on The Gilded Age? Everything You Need to Know About Will Morris, the Son of Gilded Age Season 1 Characters Patrick and Anne Morris:
Will Morris is the son of Patrick (Michael Gill) and Anne Morris (Katie Finneran), the first high society couple who tried to cross George and Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon) and suffered the consequences. All the way back in The Gilded Age Season 1, Anne Morris was a wealthy socialite intent on snubbing new money Bertha at every turn. She insulted Bertha by refusing to use the Russell ballroom for a major charity bazaar, which resulted in George gallantly buying out the entire event in one fell swoop. However, Anne’s actions proved far worse than she could have ever imagined.
While Anne was mean girl-ing Bertha, her alderman husband Patrick was trying to pull one over on George. Train daddy proposed a plan to Patrick Morris wherein he and the aldermen would buy up shares before slyly passing a law that would allow George to build a new train station in New York, which would in turn raise the stock’s value. However, Patrick and his pals decided to sell their shares in an attempt to pull off a short and then they reneged on passing the law that would help George. Faced with his own possible ruin, George secretly bought the shares himself, raising the stock value, and leaving the Morris family potentially destitute.
In The Gilded Age Season 1 Episode 3 “Face the Music,” Patrick orders his wife to make amends with Bertha in the hopes she can call George off. But Bertha sees through Anne’s act and points out that Anne’s done nothing for Bertha to warrant such a favor. The situation for the Morrises become so dire that Patrick literally gets on his knees in front of George, begging for mercy. George refuses — because Anne Morris had the gall to humiliate Bertha.
Faced with this utter failure and total financial ruin, Patrick Morris returns home, tells his wife how proud he is of her and their children, and promptly dies by suicide. Anne Morris spends the rest of the season in widow’s black, calling George Russell a murderer, before she is ousted from her own charity by support for Bertha. Now, she’s back — begging George Russell for her son’s life!
“It was great to see Katie Finneran again,” Morgan Spector told DECIDER. “She came in and did like an amazing job. Just sort of watching her — you know, she has to live through this horrendous thing happening to her son.”
George holds Will Morris in secret for the entirety of The Gilded Age Season 4 Episode 2, debating whether to kill him or turn him over to the police (who will eventually hang him). When Bertha attempts to intervene, she is rebuffed. The episode crescendoes with George holding a gun to Will Morris’s head… and Anne on her knees, like her husband before her.
The Gilded Age Season 4 Episode 2 Ending Explained: Does George Russell Kill Will Morris?
Nope! George ultimately spares Will Morris.
“I think the the reason he spares him is sort of because of the scene that we have together, where you’re talking about how, you know, what if it was Larry? Or no, I say that,” Spector said, correcting himself, but still referring to a scene between George and Bertha where they compare Will to Larry (Harry Richardson).
“I think maybe out of that sort of sense of, ‘Hey, it could be me as well,’” Spector said. “You know, there’s some sense of mercy. But he is also, you know, I also think he is a thoughtful and merciful person. There’s a limit to George’s ruthlessness.”
“He didn’t shoot the laborers,” Carrie Coon said, referring to a tense Season 2 storyline.
“He didn’t shoot the union guys,” Spector confirmed. And he didn’t shoot Will Morris.
The Gilded Age Season 4 Episode 2 ends with George returning home to Bertha after settling this ordeal.
