Killjoys post series finale interviews
Yo #Killjoys has been a quiet summer joy factory for years, and tonight’s series finale only confirmed what has long made it so special. ❤️ to the cast & crew, and thank you to @lovretta for chatting with me @paste_tv about the end https://t.co/qg25Anr453
- Alexis Gunderson (@AlexisKG) September 21, 2019
Paste Magazine spoke with showrunner and series creator Michelle Lovretta about the show and the finale. Highlights:
[Spoiler (click to open)]
* Michelle is particularly proud of the journeys of Turin and Fancy (characters that started off small and she didn't know if they'd continue), Zeph (who didn't exist in Michelle's mind, until she created her later in the series) and the evolution of Delle Seyah, which she'd like to believe is a credible one.
* One of the things they wouldn't have done if they hadn't gotten the two final seasons renewal, is the Dutch-Johnny alternate reality marriage as a cliffhanger. It was very clear to Michelle though that Dutch and Johnny wouldn't develop a romance as a result of the AU. Doubt is organic and healthy, but she really wanted to show a male and female platonic friendship that encountered that temptation, one-sided or both, and moves past it, because that kind of friendship is so valuable.
* She likes the idea of what it says that John is okay with leaving now, and that Dutch is okay with him leaving. How they’ve evolved past a panic or a possessiveness of each other and they are concrete now. So he gets to breathe a little bit, gets to have an adventure, gets to have other people see Johnny just as Johnny, and then he gets to bring all of that back.
* Of all the notes she tried to strike in the finale, she thinks you can’t believe that those characters are just going to go and be domestic. Not that those things can’t be exciting, they can, but that’s not the path Dutch and Johnny and D’avin have been on. It makes her feel good knowing those snarky bastards are out there, still kicking ass and getting into trouble. And she thinks that was the most fitting send-off she could give them.
I talked to #Killjoys creator @lovretta about the show's creative DNA, Dutch's journey, the growth of Team Awesome Force & crafting that badass ending -- check it out! https://t.co/XYA9kH3YDA
- Mo Ryan (@moryan) September 21, 2019
Mo Ryan from IGN also spoke with Michelle about the finale.
[Spoiler (click to open)]
* They didn't lobby for a final two seasons, but when they found out they had 20 episodes to end it, it was sort of a terrifying grace. You are used to a certain metric, you're used to a certain rhythm. And 10 episodes always felt a little bit small for their show, because they were trying to incorporate episodic adventures and world-building and serialization. It was this really interesting melting pot of all these forms of story. So it's a lot to jam in, and 20 is certainly more ground than they were used to.
* She likes to tell a story through the characters and it was always important that she had a direction of where they would personally end up. She always knew that Johnny was going to be departing on his own adventures and that Dutch and D'avin were going to sort of renegotiate what they wanted out of their lives. But the other part of storytelling is being open to change. She saw that footprint and the trajectory of getting to that direction, but she didn't hold herself to it if it didn't feel like the appropriate payoff. She wrote maybe four different endings, just trying to sort of test them out with her team, to see what feels right. This was the one that felt the best. There's always a feeling that for a story to feel like it matters that people have to die, but if death is all that's important, then you're selling life pretty damn short and Michelle didn't want to do that. She believes in the characters and loves their journeys- watching villains become quasi anti-heroes and the heroes be challenged, she doesn't see why they have to die just because a lot of conventions within storytelling tell us that we need death to feel that there's weight. The weight on this show has always been about love, and it's always been about hope and family and those things shouldn't have to end.
* The moment in the end with Dutch giving The Lady the doll and no longer being manipulated by anyone was important to Michelle. A lot of what she writes ends up being about consent and agency, it was a nice moment to show Dutch and the audience that she really had come full circle. She felt very empowered. She felt strong, she felt unafraid of the Lady and the situation that she's in now. And she didn't feel that she had to be forced to make the kind of moves that she would have made as an assassin. The Dutch that [we see at the end] is as close as we can get to who Dutch would have been if she hadn't been manipulated so much all her life. And it was a pleasure to meet that Dutch by the end.
* She talks about casting, picking up energy from people but not being able to predict personality. Like, Luke being funny and them not knowing it at first, but he just kept nailing the random occasional comic line they gave him. It made them think "Oh, here's a new insight into what makes D’avin so lovable." He's self-aware. He's just the tiniest bit goofy, especially for a big, handsome man. He's really loving, and kind of soft. He's a bit vulnerable in ways that Dutch can see - in a good way. That’s her favorite part about writing television versus writing a movie or writing a novel - you have time to extract from these actors all these things that they can do.
* It's probably always her goal moving forward to have powerful, complicated women in the center of her stories. It serves her as much as it serves the audience, she always wanted more of it when she was younger and to be a part of rectifying that and putting more of these nuanced characters on screen, that haven't always been seen at the center of these stories. Michelle is a woman who loves women, who had women around her and was very comfortable within that world. It appealed to her that Dutch wasn’t - for her own very well-earned, organic childhood reason. She didn't have the female friends that Michelle always had her entire life. That was a sign of her being wounded. It wasn't a sign of power that she was so close to the boys. It was important to take her down the path of healing, where she got past that and when you're seeing her have hugs with D'av, when you're seeing her have these bonds with Aneela. That's the end of her internal journey and it’s been kind of lovely to be a part of making that story happen.
SOURCES: #1, #2
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This is it, I'm gonna kinda miss this fun little show.
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