Entertainment
Apple TV’s ‘The Last Thing He Told Me’ Finale Turns Its Last 2 Minutes Into an Even Bigger Season 3 Problem
Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for The Last Thing He Told Me, Season 2, Episode 8
Summary
After last week’s episode of The Last Thing He Told Me made its boldest move yet by killing off Frank Campano (John Noble) in broad daylight, the Season 2 finale finds that the power that once held this world together has officially shifted. Whatever fragile balance was left in keeping Hannah (Jennifer Garner), Owen (Nikolaj Coster–Waldau), and their daughter Bailey (Angourie Rice) safe is now in the hands of Quinn (Judy Greer), the eldest daughter of the late mafioso. It’s a turning point that doesn’t just raise the stakes but reframes the kind of danger the family of three initially found themselves in.
As Episode 8’s “Souvenirs d’enfance” highlights a potential Season 3, that shift feeds directly into the show’s biggest emotional reveal that Quinn was actually responsible for Kate’s death. But as co-creator Josh Singer tells Collider, it was far more complicated and unsettling than just a calculated murder. “There are no real bad guys, right? There are humans who make mistakes, and they’re not mistakes that are made out of malice,” he says, making it clear the distinction was always intentional. “They’re mistakes that are made out of some self-interest, but it’s never just pure evil. It’s always relatable and understandable.”
And with Quinn now firmly in power by the end — effectively taking the reins as Teddy (Luke Kirby) spirals, and with the reveal that Director of the U.S. Marshals Maris (Michael Hyatt) was the mole all along — the finale also leaves the door wide open for a Season 3. It’s a possibility series EP Lauren Neustadter, bestselling author Laura Dave, and Singer are clearly already thinking about.
“If we were to have the opportunity to dive into a third season, I would say the Judy and Luke show’s a pretty good show, right?” Singer says turning to Neustadter and his wife, Dave. “How does our relationship between our primary cast, Hannah, Owen, and Bailey, evolve? What happens with Judy and with Quinn and Luke, and what havoc they wreak? And can we ever get to a resolve with these guys — I think, is a good question.”
‘The Last Thing He Told Me’ Made Quinn’s Kate Twist More Complicated Than Pure Evil
Co-creator, Singer explains why Apple TV’s finale frames Quinn’s secret as a human mistake, not a clean act of malice.
COLLIDER: I wanted to start with the finale, because I think that’s where everything culminates to what this moment is. We also see that Quinn is a big part of it. She does admit the biggest secret, which is that she sent the car to scare Kate, but not really kill her. So why was it important for Kate’s death to come from control gone wrong, and not just pure evil or malicious intent?
JOSH SINGER: That is a great question. Thank you very much. Wow, I didn’t expect that level of detail. That is really terrific. And can I just say, first of all, how great are Jen [Garner], Angourie [Rice], and Judy Greer in that scene? To me, that and all the stuff we shot in Paris was really a pinnacle for me in terms of TV work. I was just saying that I don’t think I’ve seen performances that good since I was just starting out on The West Wing, watching John Spencer and Allison Janney going toe to toe.
Look, I have to say, this whole season was really about how do we keep to the spirit of Laura Dave and yet breathe into, “This is a television show?” That’s where we had Aaron Zelman and Daisy Mayer, who really helped push this in terms of what it could be as a TV show, and yet we had our really good friends at Hello Sunshine and Jen Garner pushing us to make sure we kept true to the spirit of Hannah Hall.
To me, one of the things that’s a hallmark of my wonderful wife’s writing is that there are no real bad guys, right? There are humans who make mistakes, and they’re not mistakes that are made out of malice. They’re mistakes that are made out of some self-interest, but it’s never just pure evil. It’s always relatable and understandable. She puts herself in everyone’s point of view. So, for me to specifically answer that question, for Quinn to just knock off her best friend would be against the spirit of what Laura does in her writing and, frankly, the spirit of what Hello Sunshine tries to do in terms of telling stories of strong women who are relatable and sometimes put in bad situations. Does that make sense?
LAUREN NEUFSTADTER: It makes perfect sense. I also think it’s really that we are giving dimension to every single one of these characters, and I think Quinn wasn’t always the woman that she is when we meet her in this show. To Laura and Josh’s great credit, they really think about all of the ingredients that lead us to the place where we are. So, while she makes very clear choices in the present, clearly they’re very informed by the events of the past, and this is a great example of just that.
‘The Last Thing He Told Me’ Finale Sets Up a Much Bigger Quinn Story for Season 3
Dave says the next chapter could lean into how Quinn and Hannah are more alike than they seem.
After Frank’s death, though, we do see that Quinn lets Hannah and Bailey go, but she makes that call about loose ends to Maris, who we find out is the mole, by the way. Very shocking. I did not think about that. What did you guys want that last beat to say about the world Hannah and Owen’s family will find themselves in now, going into a potential Season 3, which I’m hoping for, fingers crossed? It feels like we’re going to get there.
SINGER: Fingers crossed, as well. That’s very kind of you. What I would say is one of the things we were able to do, and Lauren’s been saying, is open the aperture up a little bit in the second season. We got a great supporting cast, whether it’s Michael Hyatt, who’s extraordinary as Maris, Judy, Luke Kirby, John Noble, Rita Wilson, all these wonderful people to play with in addition to our tremendous key cast of David [Morse], Nikolaj [Coster-Waldau], Angourie, and Jen. So, to me, if we were to have the opportunity to dive into a third season, I would say the Judy and Luke show’s a pretty good show, right? So, continue to be able to explore that. As is the Angourie and David show, as is the Jen and Nikolaj show. So, being able to follow how does our relationship between our primary cast, Hannah, Owen, and Bailey, evolve? What happens with Judy and with Quinn and Luke, and what havoc they wreak? And can we ever get to a resolve with these guys, I think, is a good question.
Laura, I wonder, was there ever a hell for Maris, or along the way were there breadcrumbs that you had in the book that you wanted to plant in the background as nuances? Was there anything that maybe is very obvious to you as the writer, thinking it that way?
LAURA DAVE: Well, I can take absolutely no credit for the Maris storyline. That was something that the writers of Season 2 came up with. What I did really want to lean into, and to answer your question also about Season 3 a little bit, is what I really wanted to lean into here. I really appreciate how you mentioned that about Quinn, because I’m always interested in what makes us similar as opposed to what makes us different, and this idea that evil and goodness aren’t as far apart as they seem if it both starts from the place of wanting to get somewhere better, and how we find the nuance there. So, I think really for Season 3, too, it would be leaning into many ways that Quinn and Hannah are more alike than they are different. That wasn’t a question about Maris, but I can’t answer your questions about Maris. [Laughs] I can’t answer that. I can only say they did a wonderful job.
‘The Last Thing He Told Me’ Bosses Explain Why Grady Had To Die
Singer says Grady’s death was meant to hit hard — and his story may not be over just yet.
It’s great. Going back to Episode 4, finding out that Grady got killed off, that whole case starts to get really murky. Do we see justice for Grady down the line? He was opening a can of worms. Did you want to break that trust in the system early on in the mid-season point? What does that unlock then for a potential storyline with whatever comes next in Season 3?
SINGER: It was very bittersweet because Augusto [Aguilera] was so great, and was so great in the first season, and yet Aaron and I very quickly were like, “Well, we’ve got to kill him off.” And it was in part because he’s someone you love. So the idea of losing him really hitting home, like this is real. These stakes are real. One of the interesting things about where we might go in a potential Season 3 is, as we see with Hannah and Owen and Bailey and Nicholas, they’re in such a good place, and Charlie, that they wouldn’t stir stuff up necessarily on their own. But if we know that Quinn and Teddy are going to stir stuff up, and you know that Teddy is going to stir stuff up, then it’s going to go both ways. I think finding justice for Augusto’s character would be a nice thing to explore in Season 3.
This season also reshaped what Bailey thinks she knows about her mom and her family, and then we get to see a mess that follows. Did you ever consider giving her just a cleaner truth, or was that mess supposed to be the point, like it’s supposed to be realistic?
SINGER: Again, as I think I said earlier on, and I think Hello Sunshine responded to this too, was when we started being able to play with different pairings, when we started being able to have Hannah and Owen go off on their own, and Bailey off on her own journey, specifically with talking to Nicholas and then talking to Quinn, there’s something really interesting. And Gary is such a strong actor, which is something we saw in the first season. She could carry the ball right. When you’ve got a great running back, you give her the ball. And she really did run with that ball. It just enabled us to really widen the aperture, as Lauren said, to enrich this drama. But of course, you always want it to be messy, and I think that’s, again, the great thing about Laura’s writing is it is messy in the best of ways. It’s human as opposed to mustache-twirly.
‘The Last Thing He Told Me’ Never Lost Sight of Hannah Hall’s Story, Dave Says
The NYT bestselling author says the story’s throughline is simple: second chances and becoming your own hero.
Laura, was there a scene from the book this season that you wanted to circle around a lot, and you were like, “This is the one scene we can’t mess up that we have to have in the series?” Was there something that the show version did that the page didn’t do, like back and forth?
DAVE: Well, something that was so lovely because we’ve been partners in this from the very beginning is that we had this idea. We had a conversation in our backyard with Lauren about the idea of, like, what are the bright lines? What are the things that are going to make sure that the show and the book are really speaking to each other? And that is really this idea of getting to the place of how do we all get a second chance, which I think is something in the zeitgeist that we’re all hungry for right now? How do we get to a place where we can find forgiveness, where we can get somewhere better for all of these characters?
One of my very favorite scenes is between the inimitable Jennifer Garner and Judy Greer in Episode 8, where you first see that fight, and then where you get, as Josh and Lauren were just talking about, that resolution with Angourie and Jennifer and Judy. The other thing that I did want to mention is, and it’s funny how things all come back, but when I started writing this first book, it was 2011, but I started thinking about it all the way back in 2003 — Lauren knows this story. The two things that really mattered to me were an interview I saw with Linda Lay, in which she was talking about how her husband had done nothing wrong, and an interview I saw with Reese Witherspoon in which she was quoting Gloria Steinem and how important it is for women to watch other women become the hero of their own lives. For all three of us up here, if I can say that, that is really what’s at the heart of this, and what would be at the heart of it moving forward, is that Hannah Hall is the hero of her own life, and everything revolves around that.
The Last Thing He Told Me is now streaming on Apple TV.
- Release Date
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April 13, 2023
- Network
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Apple TV
- Showrunner
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Laura Dave, Josh Singer
- Directors
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Olivia Newman, Deniz Gamze Ergüven, Daisy von Scherler Mayer, Lila Neugebauer
- Writers
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Josh Singer, Laura Dave, Jamie Rosengard, Isaac Gómez, Harris Danow, Allegra Caldera, Erica Tavera
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Jennifer Garner
Hannah Hall
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Angourie Rice
Bailey Michaels
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