In Break Point season 2, Aryna Sabalenka kicked off 2023 with her biggest victory, conquering the Australian Open as well as defying the ‘Netflix Curse’ in the process.
The star athletes of Netflix’s Break Point kick off 2023 with a nightmare of a spell.
One by one, all of the stars fall, dropping out of the Australian Open 2023 either due to injuries, or losses.
The Break Point curse
Kyrgios pulls out after his first match vs Djokovic, due to knee and wrist injuries. Tomljanovic also pulls out due to injury, with a minimum of three months recovery period. Badosa also pulled out
Matteo Berrettini loses vs Andy Murray, Ons Jabeur also loses, and so does Casper Ruud. The next ones are Maria Sakkari, who loses to Zhu Lin, and then Thonasi Kokkinakis tastes defeat as well.
Felix Auger-Aliassime is also out after losing to Lehecka. With all the Break Point familiars getting out of the race one by one, netizens take note of the trend and term these losses or drop-outs the “Netflix Curse.”
Gradually, this gets picked up by the news outlets too, and some players also get to hear it, though most of them dismiss it with a laugh.
Breaking the curse
Sabalenka became the first one from the Break Point to break this alleged curse. She is 24 at the start of the Australian Open 2023.
She lost her father months after the 2022 US Open. A hockey player himself, her father always wanted her to be the best.
It’d always been her shared dream with her father, to win a Grand Slam. Sabalenka says in episode 1 that he thought that she would win it before 25.
She set a lot of expectations and a firm threshold for herself, which she didn’t want to cross without having a Grand Slam title to her name.
Failing at semi-finals thrice before, Sabalenka came to the Australian Open 2023 fearing the same thing might happen again.
Add to that the goals she has set for herself, and the expectations of her father she keeps at the back of her mind, and Sabalenka could very well have suffered from the same turn of fate.
Thankfully, she realized it was a new start for herself.
Meanwhile, her coach and physiotherapist, along with others, all pulled in for her and helped keep her calm and under control of her emotions — something she’s not been particularly good at.
Sabalenka wins the semi-finals and faces Elena Rybakina, who’s already won a final before.
However, Sabalenka emerges the victor at the end and finally breaks the Netflix Break Point curse, which was a jocular online thing anyway.
What’s not funny about her win is the emotional impact of it and her accomplishments, which she instantly shared with her mother.
She also learned from her mother that her father was always proud of her after each match, and didn’t care much about the titles.
As Sabalenka finally gets to enjoy a pizza slice, she also sees her father’s surname on the trophy, and as she walks out of frame smiling, she says, “What f–king Netflix curse?”
Also Read: Break Point part 2 review