I thought that was the biggest weaknes. The challenges all feel small and made up. The depiction of substance abuse is just strange. It's like a teenagers dream of how it is to become a chess pro with some small speed bumps to not make it too blatant. As for the sport, her career was more similar to that of boxer than a chess player.

Interesting - I thought it was about a damaged woman who had a period of sobriety and was able to win a championship.

I suppose it depends on what we imagine happens after the series ended. I don't see her going back to Kentucky and making red headed babies with the creepy journalist.

I wondered this as well. Once she was at the top of her game, what would the rest of her life look like?

She could have some rematches with Borgov and other Russian champions, presumably winning most of them and maybe losing a few. And after that? Teach? Go back to drugs? Wait until a new child prodigy can challenge her?

She wasn't happy playing that talented Soviet kid. He isn't going away and neither is the rest of the Soviet team. It's pointed out earlier that the Soviet Union pays its players, while she is going to have to scrape by on tournament winnings and Christian charity offers with strings attached.

There's no way she's recovered from her addictions, she bought sedatives while in the USSR and only just managed to keep herself from taking them.

She has a cold, off-putting personality which is probably going to loose it's luster once her novelty has warn off. Her mother probably suffered from mental illness and there seems to be a reasonable chance she inherited it. There's a discussion that happens midway though the series about all the Chess grandmasters who lost their minds, which feels prophetic.

I don't know if neglect, abuse and addiction is "going well". but she did overcome all the adversity to win in the end.

I really enjoyed it, but she had a pretty rough time of it.

I find this is the case with most sports (soccer, dancing, iceskating, etc) movies. They are mostly about character building and overcoming challenges -- the actual sport is barebones and could be mostly swapped for any other.

I still enjoyed Queen's Gambit a lot. It did foreshadow but then subvert some common tropes.

So? It made the sport look interesting.

the character work is sublime.

As an actor myself, I was very impressed. They played chess like chess players. Each move had a meaning to them. They told a story just with the way they touched the pieces. The emotions were both powerful and tightly contained, which I find more exciting than the kind of big, showy acting that usually attracts the most attention.

It was an exercise in intention and specificity, things that get drilled into you in acting classes but rarely so clear.