Needle Drop: 'The Americans' and U2’s 'With or Without You'

Some moments live in dialogue. Others in silence. But sometimes it’s the music that leaves the deepest mark. Our ongoing series Needle Drop looks back at the songs that shaped TV: the ones that swelled emotion, cut against tension, or turned a good scene into something unforgettable. These are the tracks that made us pause, rewind, and press play again long after the credits rolled.

Note: If you’d like to revisit the finale scenes (or see them for the first time), you’ll find the clip below.

The Americans didn’t end with fireworks. It ended with headlights and a song. After six seasons of disguises, betrayals, and a marriage built on secrecy, the spy drama’s last image wasn’t a gunshot or a reveal. It was U2’s “With or Without You,” carrying Philip (Matthew Rhys) and Elizabeth Jennings (Keri Russell) into exile.

Released in 1987, the track already carried longing and fracture. Onscreen, it became something smaller, almost private. What once filled stadiums turned into an elegy for two spies who could only keep going together, despite losing everything else.

Created by former CIA officer Joe Weisberg, the series followed Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, Soviet operatives posing as a suburban couple outside Washington, D.C. They ran a travel agency, raised two kids, and during their off-hours carried out missions that tested their loyalty and their marriage. What made the show remarkable wasn’t just the spy games—the wigs, the codes, the betrayals—but how it tied geopolitics to intimacy.

The FX drama aired from 2013 to 2018. Critics adored it, though the audience never matched shows like Mad Men or Breaking Bad. In 2018, Rhys finally won an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor, long overdue recognition for one of TV’s most layered performances.

By the final season, the Jennings’ world was collapsing. Their daughter Paige (Holly Taylor) was drawn into their work. Their neighbor Stan Beeman (Noah Emmerich), an FBI agent, was closing in. The finale, “START,” brings it all to a breaking point: Stan learns the truth, Paige makes her choice, and the family’s careful façade dissolves entirely.

The song arrives towards the end of the episode, the opening chords of “With or Without You” rise up, saying what they can’t. Phillip, in disguise, buys McDonald’s for Elizabeth and Paige. He pauses for a moment to admire the another family happily sharing their meal—an image of ordinary life he knows he’ll never have again. The next day, when Elizabeth, Phillip, and Paige board a train to escape, Paige steps off at the last minute. She stays behind, her face set, as her parents vanish into exile.

Elizabeth and Philip are stunned, realizing Paige chose an uncertain future without them. Their escape continues, but their family doesn’t. The choice of song is exact. A chorus once belted out in arenas now narrows to a whisper of loneliness and survival: “My hands are tied / My body bruised / She got me with / Nothing to win and nothing left to lose / And you give yourself away…”

Not every finale earns its music. Some shows tack on the song as an afterthought. Here, the music feels essential. Elizabeth and Philip don’t name what they lost—their children, their cover, the life they spent decades building in America—but Bono’s wailing, mournful voice gives it shape.

Along a dark road, gazing at the lights of a city in Russia flickering in the distance, their faces show little but feel heavy all the same: grief, resignation, the odd flicker of peace. They’re still together; that’s what’s left.

The power of the moment comes from restraint. After years of spy craft, The Americans chose simplicity. The song sharpened that choice, made it unforgettable. The ending avoids spectacle, homing in on the cost of their lies and deception.

Seven years later, The Americans’ ending still holds. When people think of the series now, they may recall the wigs, the tradecraft, the betrayals. But what stays is that train ride, the cut of family ties, and a song playing into the holiday air. “With or Without You” doesn’t resolve anything. It lingers, just like the Jennings’ thorny story. Family, loyalty, love—they don’t fit neatly. They live in that uneasy space between with and without.