Episode 6 Recap, Locations & History
Get a recap of all the action and all the feels in Les Misérables‘ action-packed, heart-wrenching finale. Plus, see some of the episode’s filming locations, discover Victor Hugo’s shocking experience in the real June Uprising, and find out which of the musical’s songs fit Episode 6’s action! Just catching up? Watch Episode 6 online now for a limited time!
Episode 6 Recap: Everything you need to know
1. Enjolras: This barricade is made of more than cobblestones and bedsteads: it is made of hopes, ideals, of love for our fellow men. We fight for the wretched of the earth, and if we die, we go to our deaths with joy! Long live the Republic!
Through a melee of agony, smoke, and fire, the insurgents are killed. Gavroche is shot down as he picks bullets off corpses, and Enjolras and his drunken friend Grantaire bravely face a firing squad as comrades and brothers.
2. Valjean: Do you wish to die?
Javert: It would make more sense than this!
Valjean volunteers to kill the insurgents’ prisoner—Javert—but once everyone’s gone, he sets his nemesis free, even offering himself up for arrest if he makes it out alive. Javert is utterly astonished and cannot reconcile Valjean’s action with his idea of the man.
3. Valjean: Forgive me. Forgive me!
Carrying the near-dead Marius through Paris’ filthy, pitch black sewers, Valjean has a dark night of the soul. He’s haunted by his past and stops to beg God’s forgiveness before trudging on. When he reaches the locked gate at the end of the tunnel, he howls in despair. But Thenardier, of all people, has a key, and releases him in exchange for the few coins from the pockets of the man he thinks that Valjean murdered.
4. Valjean: If he lives, he intends to rob me of all my happiness.
Javert: And yet you…Are you insane?
Valjean: No, I don’t think so. Are you?
After dropping their charge, a very seriously injured Marius, at his grandfather’s, Javert and Valjean continue on in the inspector’s carriage. Javert can’t comprehend Valjean saving the life of the man whose survival would mean an end to his happiness. Valjean asks for one more favor before going into Javert’s custody: to stop by his house and see Cosette. But when Valjean returns to the street after leaving Marius’ grandfather’s address for Cosette to find, Javert is gone.
5. Javert: Everything I’ve ever believed to be true, everything I lived my life by…and he…he…No matter.
Javert has lost his way—he can’t reconcile the idea of redemption with his rigid belief in the law. And with his whole world undermined, he cannot go on. With only Thenardier, hidden in the shadows, as a witness, Javert jumps from the bridge and takes his life.
6. Valjean: I don’t belong in the family of men, monsieur. I am on the outside.
Upon Cosette and Marius’ engagement, Valjean tells his future son-in-law about his past. He allows Marius to believe the worst about him, and vows that if Marius keeps his past from Cosette, he will stay out of their lives. Marius, believing Valjean to be Javert’s killer, agrees.
7. Cosette: He was saving your life.
Thenardier stops by the newlyweds’ home to drop some poisoned knowledge on them and reveal Valjean’s true identity as a thief and a killer. But when Marius learns that Valjean didn’t kill Javert, and that Valjean didn’t rob and murder the man he carried, but saved him—and that that man was Marius—he and Cosette understand all about Valjean, and rush to find him.
8. Valjean: Love each other.
In a heartbreaking reunion, Cosette embraces her dying Papa in her love, and his redemption is complete.
For Fans of the Musical
Here are the songs that match Episode 6’s action:
Drink with Me: Drink with me to days gone by / To the life that used to be
Bring Him Home: You can take, you can give / Let him be, let him live
Empty Chairs at Empty Tables: Empty chairs at empty tables / Now my friends are dead and gone
Finale: Now you are here / Again beside me / Now I can die in peace / For now my life is blessed
Real History: Qu’est-ce que c’est ?
What Was Victor Hugo’s inspiration for Les Misérables?
Did you know that Victor Hugo himself was swept up in the actual June Rebellion? On June 5, 1832, the author was near the chaos of Lamarque’s funeral procession, writing a play at the Tuileries Gardens, when he heard gunfire. He made his way not to his home but rather through the deserted streets toward the gunfire coming from the area of Les Halles. According to Graham Robb’s Victor Hugo: A Biography, Hugo was unaware that the rebels were in control of a third of the city, their barricades blocking the narrow streets. He soon found himself in the middle of an active skirmish, trapped between rioters and government troops. For a quarter of an hour, he sheltered by pressing himself against the wall of a shopfront as shots were fired back and forth. Thirty years later, he would bring his heroes and villains of Les Misérables all together in the bloody uprising.
Episode 6 Locations
See where some of Episode 6’s scenes were filmed and get inside information about the real-life locations and the filming.
Pont au Change, Paris: Namur, Belgium
Standing in for Paris' Pont au Change is the Jambes Bridge over the River Meuse in Namur, the capitol of Wallonia, Belgium's French-speaking region. Les Misérables' production crew took over the bridge for a night to film Javert's devastating suicide.
St. John de Baptiste du Béguinage Church
This 17th century Baroque church in the heart of Brussels stands in for Paris' Eglise Saint-Paul Saint-Louis, where Marius and Cosette are married. (It also serves as the church where young Marius meet Mabeuf, and where Marius, during his childhood, was watched by his father, Eglise Saint-Supice in the novel.)
