In [8]: '\xd5\xd4\xc3\xcf\xee\\' == '\xd5\xd4\xc3\xcf\xee\x5c'
Out[8]: True
The trailing backslash is just the byte '\x5c'
.
In [9]: hex(ord('\\'))
Out[9]: '0x5c'
In [10]: '\x5c'
Out[10]: '\\'
A string is just a sequence of bytes, and the final byte just happens to be the same as a backslash encoded in ASCII. When Python prints the repr of a string, it converts bytes into printable ASCII characters when possible.