Although Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s breakup was promoted as one of the major plots of the final season of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, the E! Series has been very strategic about what it reveals about the state of KimYe. However, the penultimate episode revealed that the cracks in the power couple’s relationship weren’t minor by any means; from the looks of Kim’s emotional outburst, there’s no fixing what’s broken in this marriage.
In part one of the KUWTK series finale, the Kardashian-Jenners take a trip to their sprawling vacation home in Lake Tahoe to bond before shooting for the show wraps for good. Everyone — except for Kim — is in good spirits despite the sobering reality of KUWTK coming to an end. The show's star is irritable, and clearly something is amiss. Though her family is noticeably annoyed by her bad mood, empath Khloé sees it for what it is: Kim projecting her negative feelings about the downward spiral of her marriage onto the people around her.
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“Kim has been struggling privately behind camera with her relationship,” Khloé notes astutely in her confessional. “And it’s tough because she’s clearly redirecting so much of her frustration, sadness, and anger. Sometimes, you just take things out on something that has nothing to do with what you’re going through.”
A flashback to a private conversation between sisters before the trip provided further insight into Kim’s sour mood. After getting into a huge fight with Kanye, the SKIMS founder turned to Khloé, Kourtney, Kendall, and Kylie to vent about her feelings towards the chaos in her relationship.
“[Kanye] deserves someone who can support his every move and go follow him all over the place and move to Wyoming,” Kim said tearfully, crumpled tissue in hand. “I can’t do that.”
“I feel like a fucking failure that it’s a third marriage [to end like this],” she continued to her sisters’ dismay. “Yeah, I feel like a fucking loser!”
Her pending separation from Kanye marks Kim's third marriage to end in divorce; her exes include music producer Damon Thomas (2000-2003) and Kris Humphries (72 days in 2011). It’s difficult to watch Kim break down over the downturn of her marriage, especially knowing how much both she and Kanye went through in the most recent years of their relationship. Since they started dating in 2012, the couple faced a bevy of ups (landing the cover of Vogue, expanding their family) and downs (the Paris robbery, Kanye's Trumpism and mental health struggles made public), but they stayed together through it all. Unfortunately, Kim finally reached her breaking point by the time the show wrapped, filing for divorce in February 2021 and citing "irreconcilable differences" as the cause for the split.
We've watched so much of Kim and Kanye's relationship play out from the very beginning on KUWTK, so I guess it's only fitting that the lead up to the final chapter of this love story happens on the final episodes of the show as well. It's poetic, really. Sad, but poetic nonetheless.
New episodes of the final season of Keeping Up with the Kardashians premiere Friday on hayu, then air Sundays on E!.
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