Netflix’s 'The Polygamist' Isn’t Really About Polygamy it's an Illustration of Emotional Abuse

Like a lot of people, I finally gave in to the hype surrounding Netflix’s South African drama The Polygamist. Social media had been talking about it nonstop, and with a flight ahead of me and plenty of time to binge watch, I decided to see what all the excitement was about. Going in, I expected a story that explored the complexities of polygamy as a lifestyle, where multiple adults knowingly choose to participate in the same marriage. Instead, I found myself watching something entirely different. By the second episode, I realized the title didn’t quite fit the story being told. In my opinion, this series isn’t really about a polygamist. It’s about an adulterer who mistakes his success for permission to do whatever he wants.

Maybe there’s a cultural distinction that I’m missing, but from my perspective, polygamy suggests transparency, consent, and an agreed upon structure, whether people personally agree with it or not. What unfolds in this series isn’t built on honesty. It’s built on deception. Gomora isn’t navigating multiple committed relationships with the knowledge of everyone involved. He’s lying, manipulating, and constantly asking two women to accept less than they deserve while convincing himself that his money, power, and influence somehow excuse his behavior. That’s why I kept thinking this series should have been called The Adulterer. The title The Polygamist suggests one story, but what we actually watch is a cautionary tale about infidelity, ego, and the dangerous belief that success somehow places you above accountability.

What fascinated me most about Gomora wasn’t simply that he cheated. Television has shown us unfaithful husbands for decades. What fascinated me was how quickly he began believing his own mythology. The series tells the story of a man who fought his way out of poverty and built an empire. That’s admirable, and it’s easy to understand why people admire someone who creates success from nothing. Unfortunately, somewhere along the journey, he stops seeing people as relationships and starts seeing them as possessions. The more powerful he becomes, the more entitled he feels, and eventually his wealth begins convincing him that consequences are something that happen to other people. Even taking his own brother’s woman doesn’t seem driven by love as much as conquest. I actually think being able to take her from his brother only inflated his ego even more. It reinforced the dangerous belief that if he wanted something, he could simply have it, regardless of who got hurt in the process.

One of the more fascinating characters in the series is Matipa because she understands something that has existed since the beginning of time: beauty can be a form of power. She is curvaceous, undeniably attractive, and completely aware of the effect she has on influential men. Rather than relying on education, business acumen, or professional achievement to climb the social ladder, she makes a calculated decision to use her sex appeal as her greatest asset. She presents herself on a sexual platter to be dominated, and powerful men fall for it every time. Ironically, the very men who believe they’re in control eventually discover they’ve been the ones manipulated all along. She doesn’t simply flirt. She studies powerful men, learns what they desire, and positions herself as exactly what they’re looking for.

We first see that strategy with Gomora’s less successful brother. She allows him to believe he’s the prize while quietly assessing whether he can take her where she ultimately wants to go. Once she realizes Gomora possesses greater wealth, influence, and status, her allegiance shifts just as quickly. Later, she employs that same strategy with the minister, demonstrating that for Matipa, intimacy is less about love than leverage. Every relationship becomes another rung on the ladder she’s determined to climb. What makes her such a compelling character is that she isn’t written as simply a victim or simply a villain. She’s ambitious, resourceful, and fiercely determined to escape the limitations of her circumstances, but she’s also willing to commodify herself in pursuit of power. Gomora mistakes her desire for him as genuine affection when, in reality, she is just as attracted to what he represents as she is to what he can gain for her. Their relationship becomes a collision of two people who both see human connection as transactional. He believes his money entitles him to women, while she believes her beauty can open doors that would otherwise remain closed. Neither is truly searching for love, and that’s precisely why their relationship is doomed from the beginning.

As compelling as Gomora and Matipa are, the emotional heart of this series belongs to Joyce. Every woman watching will probably recognize someone she knows in Joyce, and if we’re honest, many of us will recognize pieces of ourselves. Watching her slowly lose confidence as she desperately fights to save her marriage is heartbreaking because you know exactly what’s happening long before she does. Every promise gives her another reason to hope. Every apology convinces her to stay a little longer. Every betrayal chips away at her confidence until she begins believing that fighting for her marriage means sacrificing pieces of herself. The most painful scenes aren’t the arguments or even the affairs. They’re the quiet moments when you realize she no longer recognizes the woman she used to be.

That was the lesson I carried with me after finishing the series. Love is one of the most powerful emotions we experience, but sometimes loving someone else comes at the expense of loving ourselves. Joyce doesn’t stay because she’s weak. She stays because she’s hopeful, and hope can be incredibly dangerous when it’s placed in someone who has repeatedly shown you they value their own desires more than your peace. So many people have remained in relationships waiting for the version of someone they first fell in love with to return. The tragedy is that while they’re waiting for another person to change, they slowly become someone they no longer recognize themselves. Joyce’s story is painful because it reminds us that there is a difference between fighting for your marriage and abandoning yourself to save it.

The entire time I watched Joyce, I kept thinking about Jazmine Sullivan’s Bust Your Windows. People often remember the song because of the shattered glass, but that was never the real point. The broken windows were simply a manifestation of a broken heart. What made that song resonate with so many women was the hurt behind it. It’s the pain of realizing someone can repeatedly tell you they love you while treating you as though your feelings are disposable. As Jazmine reminds us, you can't just “play with people's feelings, tell them you love them and don't mean it," 

This is exactly what Gomora does throughout the series. He tells Joyce what she needs to hear just long enough to keep her holding on, only to return to the same destructive behavior. He sees the devastation in her eyes, he watches his children struggle to make sense of his choices, and he still refuses to change because every decision is filtered through what he wants in the moment. That is what ultimately makes him such a tragic character. His greatest weakness isn’t lust. It’s selfishness.

One of the reasons I think this series has become such a global success is because its themes have very little to do with geography. This isn’t just a South African story. It’s a human story. Every culture understands what happens when ambition turns into arrogance. Every culture has seen people mistake financial success for moral superiority. Every culture has watched someone become so convinced of their own importance that they begin believing other people’s feelings are simply collateral damage in the pursuit of their own happiness. That’s what makes this story resonate so deeply. We’ve all known a Gomora, a Joyce, or even a Matipa. They may not all look the same, but they all leave the same emotional wreckage behind.

I also appreciate what this series represents for international television. It’s exciting to watch a South African production capture audiences around the world because great storytelling has never belonged exclusively to Hollywood. Stories built on authentic emotion will always travel across cultures because heartbreak, betrayal, hope, and redemption are universal experiences. Whether you’re watching from Johannesburg, Atlanta, London, or New York, the emotions feel familiar because we’ve all experienced some version of them in our own lives. That’s exactly what good storytelling is supposed to do. It introduces us to people we’ve never met while reminding us of people we’ve known our entire lives.

By the end of the series, I wasn’t thinking about whether Gomora loved one woman more than the other. I wasn’t thinking about whether Joyce should have left sooner or whether Matipa deserved what she got. I kept thinking about how destructive it becomes when people stop viewing human beings as gifts and start viewing them as possessions. The moment we begin believing another person’s love is something we’re entitled to instead of something we’re entrusted with, we’re already headed toward destruction. Love cannot survive where people become trophies, bargaining chips, or stepping stones. Whether it’s money, beauty, influence, or status, every form of power eventually becomes dangerous when it’s used to manipulate instead of protect.

There’s a line from Jay-Z that has always stayed with me: “Nobody wins when the family feuds.” That quote feels like the perfect way to summarize The Polygamist. No one truly wins here. The husband loses his family. The wife loses herself. The mistress discovers that relationships built on deception rarely provide lasting security. The children lose the stability every child deserves. Even the men who believed they were controlling Matipa eventually discover they had been seduced into surrendering their own judgment. In the end, the man who believed he was untouchable learns the hardest lesson of all: power can buy influence, status, and even temporary loyalty, but it can never replace integrity. By the time he realizes that, the people who loved him most have already paid the highest price.

Perhaps that’s why this story resonates so deeply. It’s not really about polygamy at all. It’s about what happens when people confuse love with possession, desire with commitment, and power with invincibility. Eventually the illusion falls apart, and when it does, everyone who believed it pays the price.