YMMV / The Great

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Is Peter's reaction to Catherine's attempt to assassinate him 1) Peter being oblivious to the situation; 2) because so many women have tried to kill him he thinks it's routine and he's dealt with it before; 3) because he thinks it's just a jape; or 4) because he knows exactly what's going on but is pretending he doesn't so as to not panic the court. Each of these views depends on whether you think he's mostly an idiot, a degenerate, a man-child, or a master schemer. There's evidence for each, depending on how charitable you want to be.
  • Is Marial a backstabber who was never seriously behind Catherine's coup in the first place and may even have baited her into failing, or is she broken by the deaths of Vlad and Alexei and desperate to save her life after it looks like the coup's failed?
• Aluminum Christmas Trees:
  • There really was a ban on beards in Russia at one point as the country was brought in line with Western European models and fashions; men were often forcibly shaved if they weren't part of the clergy and refused to either go clean-shaven or pay an appropriate tax. However, this was a law decreed by Peter I and so happened some decades before the show is set, rather than being put into place very recently.
  • A few of the bizarre fertility methods depicted in the show are (surprisingly) historically accurate, such as peeing on wheat for a pregnancy test.
  • Aunt Elizabeth (Empress Elizabeth in real life) did very much enjoy wearing male attire, as it suited her figure.
  • Catherine's craving for dirt during her pregnancy is a real condition called geophagia.
• Genius Bonus: Peter's most prominent Body Double, Pugachev, is named for a Cossack rebel who actually claimed to be Peter III.
• Harsher in Hindsight: In "War and Vomit", Catherine is initially delighted about Peter maybe dying (until it all gets complicated and she might have to kill a child). Two seasons later, after much Character Development from him and realization of love from her, he does die, and she can barely function.
• Heartwarming Moments: A surprising one from Peter. While Catherine is giving birth, Peter tries to enter the room, but is stopped by the servants, saying it’s tradition that he shouldn’t be in there. His response?
  Peter: Fuck that. I want to see my son born.
• Hollywood Homely: Obviously it's part of the satire, but Count Orlo (played by Sacha Dhawan) is constantly described as unattractive and Catherine has to get herself drunk in order to try and seduce him - though this is as much because of her inability to seduce anyone.
• Love to Hate: Peter, played masterfully by Nicholas Hoult, is an unambiguously evil, cruel tyrant who sacrifices millions of Russian citizens for the sake of an endless war with Sweden, casually holds public executions, tortures his own court, abuses his wife and animals, intentionally cuckolds his "friends" and much more, but Hoult plays him with such an effortlessly charming breeziness and a complete obliviousness to his evil nature that it can be easy to forget how monstrous he is, particularly when he proves surprisingly amenable to Catherine's ideas and begins to feel genuine affection for her. On more than one occasion, he appears to be truly Innocently Insensitive about some of his more heinous actions, which only adds to the effect. Even Catherine seems to almost hesitate at the key moment due to his affection, until Peter reveals his intentions for Leo, snapping her into an Unstoppable Rage that results in her initial failure to kill him.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Peter's mother was already known to be physically and emotionally abusive to her son, but the revelation that she drowned Elizabeth's son Igor while Peter watched finally puts her over the line.
  • Lady Svenska crossed it by murdering Shakey for humiliating the nobles.
  • Peter The Great, a horrible father anyway, clearly crossed it in Catherine's eyes when she hears that he laughed at Peter and Grigor (both twelve years old) getting raped by Simitz.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • When a blood-splattered Count Orlo returns to Catherine's chambers after being forced by Peter to shave a fellow noble with only a dagger.
  • Peter's gruesome Swedish dinner, where the guests are forced to eat dessert off platters on which he placed the rotting heads of Swedish soldiers. A while later, he decides to order his courtiers to pick up the heads and gouge out their eyes. Catherine is deeply sickened and traumatized by this, and asks the Archbishop to give the heads a Christian burial.
  • The battle scene Elizabeth and Catherine visit. They pose for a victory portrait standing on piles of bodies, and even the Cloudcuckoolander Elizabeth has to leave their carriage to scream.
  • When the pox breaks out among the servants in the palace, the traditional approach is to burn them to stop it spreading whether or not they're definitely dead. Vlad, Marial and Catherine's friend, is one of them.
  • Marial's situation is pure nightmare fuel. She woke up one night to discover that she was losing everything: her apartments, her clothes, her dog - even her status as a person. All through no fault of her own, and with no way to get them back herself.
  • The simple fact that nobody and nothing is safe in Peter's court. Everybody is hostage to his mercurial whims and cruel nature.
  • Aunt Elizabeth walking into Peter's room with Ivan's lifeless corpse. It can be pretty jarring for first time viewers.
  • In the climax of episode nine, Peter hosts a banquet with his courtiers...all of whom are sporting bloody wounds from the tortures that he ordered earlier that day, and glaring at him in hatred. Even Peter realises just how badly he's messed up and is cowed into silence.
• Squick: The show is no stranger to vulgarity, so there are several moments that qualify, but perhaps none so much as what Marial's father did to get him and his family revoked of their titles: In a night of drunken partying with Peter, he got the mummified corpse of the late empress (Peter's mother) and violated it right in front of him.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Catherine, having gone through a Trauma Conga Line at the behest of the ladies at court, sobbing in Leo's arms about how lonely she is and how badly she misses home.
  • Vlad contracting smallpox just before he was about to lose his virginity to Marial, bidding her a tearful goodbye, and dying of the disease before being burned to stop the spread.
  • Catherine having to sacrifice Leo in order to pull off her coup, thanks to Peter taking the latter hostage.
  • Shakey getting murdered by Lady Svenska simply for being used by Catherine in a "jape" to try to teach the aristocrats that the serfs are just as human as the nobles are. Though at least Shakey is avenged almost immediately by Marial.
  • Elizabeth admitting that she tries to fill up the hole left in her by the death of her son with other things, but sometimes it just runs too fucking deep.
  • Peter admitting what Simitz did to him and Grigor (and heavily implied George at the end) when they were twelve years old: sexual assault in front of Peter The Great who thought it was hilarious. Catherine, who had just thought her husband was being his usual Psychopathic Manchild self, is horrified.
  • Peter's Surprisingly Sudden Death in "Ice": he falls into a frozen lake while travelling to Sweden to meet with Hugo, and Catherine and Elizabeth can only watch in shock as he disappears beneath the ice, since any attempt to rescue him would be far too dangerous. It doesn't help that he was actually trying to clean up his act and be a good husband to Catherine, and the way the scene lingers and makes you think that he'll find a way to survive only for it to be hammered in that he's been Killed Off for Real will likely leave you as shocked as Catherine herself.
  • In reaction to his death, Catherine... doesn't, brimming with mania and telling the equally shattered Grigor that it didn't happen. Until the chef gets her to try a salty dessert that Peter was planning, and she shakes with tears while Grigor comes in sobbing and telling everyone that Peter is dead.
  • Season three ends with Catherine out of her suicidal funk, a new short haircut, believing in herself not destiny, and manic dancing, but finishing slumped on the ground and sobbing.