Or that Philip slips up somehow, and Stan claps him and Elizabeth in jail for 20 years to life?
Or that Paige naively tries to help, and THAT screw the Jennings up?
The part of the ending watching Philip and Elizabeth get gut-punched by Paige on the railway platform as their train slowly pulls away and there isn’t a thing they can do because of the border patrol agents on board was pretty excellent.
This… and also, just the irony of going back to live in Russia, to have a standard of living that the show did a great job to show that would be pretty bleak. That, I think, will have been particularly tough on Philip. Maybe Elizabeth was a true believer enough that she wouldn’t care but Philip had many moments of enjoying American life.
As members of the KGB elite, they would have had privileges and a standard of living far beyond those of your average drunken factory worker and his physically abused wife.
No standing in line for rotting potatoes and toilet paper for Philip and Elizabeth!
Agreed at the beginning, but I thought they did show that things were changing there in a way that maybe the end of the Cold War would mean that they wouldn’t be treated like the heroes they were expecting to be and I thought Oleg’s homecoming and disenchantment with how things were in Russia compared to an American lifestyle foreshadowed that even if they are treated like the elite, overall it didn’t compare. Granted, what happened to Nina didn’t help Oleg love coming home but he did question why things were so different. No more muscle cars and linedancing for Phillip anyways …
The KGB may have been a little less assertive under Gorbachev and Yeltsin, but they were always there, lurking under the surface and just waiting for someone like Putin to come along and restore them to their former glory.
Yes, they would have been comparatively better off.
The key word is “comparitively”. Compared to US middle class standards it would have really, really sucked.
Several of the infamous British turncoats that fled to the Soviet Union found their lives extremely bleak.
Lee Harvey Oswald got a nice bonus pay when he “defected” to the Soviet Union. But he found that there was virtually nothing in Minsk to spend it on. Forget a choice of restaurants or movie theaters.
P&E would have been somewhere in-between. So, not so good.
Only the Party elite got to shop at the stores that actually had something almost worth buying.
People farther down the ladder had special stores where they could shop too. It was funny to listen to the wives of high-ranking army officers and other bigwigs putting each other down with their husbands’ comparative salaries as they stood in line waiting to be admitted to one.
While they would have done relatively well, they would have been very aware that things were way shittier in the Motherland for the average person than back in the US and that was the way of life to which they had dedicated their careers.
Yes, but that wouldn’t last because they were “building Socialism,” and a bright future was “just over the horizon.” 
Philip was starting to figure it out anyway. He asked why did the USSR need help with information on how to grow wheat more efficiently.
Shitty way of life in Motherland is small price to pay to rid world of moose and squirrel.
But no Pontiac Firebird for Philip, either.
We saw Oleg’s parents’ apartment in a couple of episodes, which looked more or less like they were living what would be considered a typical middle class lifestyle in America. Oleg’s father was Minister of Transportation or something like that, so I assume he was one of the Party Elite?
We also saw a glimpse of Martha’s life in the USSR, which looked pretty bleak.
So I would guess as KGB agents, Phillip and Elizabeth’s lives would be better than Martha’s, but not as good as Oleg’s.
Man, wouldn’t it be awkward if Phillip ran into Martha on the street in Moscow?
The brief scene of Martha sadly strolling through nearly empty shelves was the spookiest and most touching moment in the entire series to me.
That and when Martha was preparing a meal that appeared to consist solely of onions and bread.
Don’t forget that while they have no way of knowing it whatever privileges Philip and Elizabeth get as high ranking members of the nomenklatura will disappear in a few years when the USSR collapses. The 90s were brutal for most Russians. Maybe Philip manges to open up another travel agency or Elizabeth gets a job at the SVR Academy, but neither is in line to become oligarchs.
And back to Martha, yeah she’s going to live out her years with significant regret. Her family might be able to visit her after some years, but otherwise it’ll be a miserable existence.
And if she were to spot Philip in the streets, she’d probably want to kill him. Philip would probably arrange to have her relocated to Siberia.
Great sequel idea: bored with Elizabeth, he and Martha have an affair in Moscow, and he guiltily tries to elevate her from her poverty. Elizabeth finds out and tries to kill them both, but Phillip skillfully manages to stave her off, with the help of Gabriel and the remnants of the KGB…
I don’t think P is ever getting bored with E. If anyone is bolting that relationship once they get back in the USSR, it’s E. And I can’t imagine they stay together long anyway. P will miss certain aspects of America and E will hold him in contempt for that. She could could keep that contempt in check when they were in the US and they had a job to do, but now that they are free (har har), she won’t play. Plus, did she ever really have love-like feelings for him that lasted? Just about the only bond they had going between them (besides the kids who are now gone) was mutual trust, and while that might still be a valuable commodity in Soviet Russia, is it enough to keep them together, or more precisely is it enough to keep E from leaving P? I don’t think so. I mean, unless the Center tells them to stay married.