Back in 1976, Esquire wrote the true story of twin gynecologists who were both mysteriously and tragically found dead in their Manhattan apartment. To this day, no one knows for sure just what killed them—but many believe that both barbiturates and potential mental breakdowns due to withdrawal played a role. The story was titled Dead Ringers. A couple years later, David Cronenberg turned the wacky tale into an even wackier film starring Jeremy Irons, combining the story's elements with the psychosexual relationship shared by two brothers in the novel, Twins. Now, over 35 years later, Dead Ringers has returned to the screen.
The new Prime Video miniseries stars Rachel Weisz as twin gynecologists Beverly and Elliott Mantle, but the remake isn't anything close to a simple adaptation. Beverly, the shy and timid twin, has suffered from many miscarriages—and now believes that she cannot bare children. Meanwhile, Elliot, the more outgoing and sexual twin, is experimenting on human embryos. This work is, of course, not legal—and it begins to consume Elliott's life. Mixed with an unhealthy emotional dependence on her twin, Elliott also becomes obsessed with Beverly's new girlfriend, Genevieve. Drugs, it seems, are never going to become a product of this story.
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Instead, the twins accidentally kill a homeless woman. Then a medical journalist writes an exposé of Elliott's questionable experiments. The twins sever all ties with one another, so that Beverly can open their new birthing clinic without the burden of Elliott's work—but they aren't happy apart from one another. Eventually, Beverly reveals to Elliott that despite becoming pregnant with twins of her own, she still isn't satisfied. In fact, Beverly no longer even wants to live.
The series then makes the controversial decision to kill one twin and let the other live—which is very different that what occurred in real life. In the shocking conclusion, Beverly begs Elliott to help her end her life and take on her identity so that she can continue her work without the dark past of "Elliott" looming overhead. Elliott then performs a C-section on Beverly and lets her bleed out following the procedure, raising her two twins and becoming "Beverly." She later learns that Beverly had also been going to grief counseling over the death of her sister for years in preparation, to both set up the alibi for Elliott and process her eventual decision to end her life.
"The fact that women’s bodies are the sites for kind of the battlegrounds for different cultural points, political points of view—it couldn’t not make it into the show by default,” Weisz told Rolling Stone. "It gets more and more operatic as it progresses, but the show begins very grounded, so you can buy into the characters in that world and make the case for, you know, well, what’s wrong with maternal health care? Is there anything wrong with it? Here you go in Episode One."
Obviously, in the original Cronenberg film, the male twins do not become pregnant and they both perish in a drug-induced hysteria. One brother accidentally kills the other by cutting his stomach open with gynecologist tools—which is somewhat similar to the new miniseries—then dies in his dead brother's arms from drug withdrawal. Though neither story mirrors how the twins likely died in real life, their actual deaths remain a complete mystery. Maybe it was barbiturates, or maybe it was a suicide pact. Either way, Hollywood has always agreed that twins are anything but normal. All six episodes of Dead Ringers are available to watch over on Prime Video.
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