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Will THE AMERICANS Enlist Paige as a Russian Spy in Season 5?

Will THE AMERICANS Enlist Paige as a Russian Spy in Season 5?

FX’s Cold War drama The Americans has typically gone the mysterious, ambiguous route when it comes to teasing a new season. They are not quite as cryptic as a “next time on Mad Men” teaser, but still — the show has always operated in a veil of secrecy.

If the marketing for season five is any indication, it seems like Paige (Holly Taylor), the teenage daughter of Russian spies Philip and Elizabeth Jennings (Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell), will finally have to make a choice about whether or not she’s going to follow her parents into the family business.

Will she pledge allegiance to a country she wasn’t born in? While Paige doesn’t ostensibly have any ties to Russia — she grew up an all-American girl with an all-American childhood — she loves her parents, and her parents love their homeland so much they’ve dedicated their lives to going deep undercover to protect it. Young Paige first learned the truth about their identities in season three, meaning it’s about time for her to make a decision about her future one way or another.

Star Taylor told Nerdist she’s been waiting for this moment for her character for a while. “What I’ve always wanted Paige to do is to have the idea grow on her a little and maybe start to help her parents eventually,” she revealed ahead of the season five premiere. “Obviously, that would take a lot of time. I mean, it’s very conflicting to what she believes are her morals.”

But the very fact that Paige is considering joining her parents means that she’s keeping an open mind. “She’s the one who asked for the truth, even though she didn’t realize the heavy burden that the truth is going to give her,” Taylor said. “She has to take that responsibility and say like, ‘Okay, well, I asked for this. Now, I want to know what’s really happening.'”

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One problem with knowing the truth about such a sensitive, top-secret topic is having no one to discuss it with. “She’s so alone,” Taylor said. “I think she’s always going to have Pastor Tim to confide in, [but] he’s been her only friend. I mean, we still really haven’t seen any of Paige’s friends, so we don’t see how she interacts with people at school that much. I think that now at least, she has her parents a little more than she did before.”

There’s also the fact that her parents have essentially lied to her for her entire life. That might not be something she can easily forgive. “It’s a lot more than forgiveness for her because I feel like before she can even think about whether she should forgive them, I think she needs to just know the whole truth,” Taylor said. “I mean, she still doesn’t know exactly the whole truth and there are certain things that they really probably shouldn’t tell to a teenage girl, you know. I think for now she’s probably starting to forgive them a bit and trusting them again, which is a really big step for her.”

Just don’t think that Paige’s final decision will come easily. “I would like to see her make up her mind but I think that, when you think about it logically, it would probably take quite a bit of time for her in real life,” Taylor pointed out. “I think that realistically, it will probably take some thinking and some really hard decision-making, more questions and understanding about what her parents are doing to really come around to it. But I would like her to get to that place eventually.”

The Americans season five premieres Tuesday, March 7 at 10 p.m. on FX.

Images: FX

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