[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the Found series finale “Missing While Dying.”]
Well, now we’ll never know if Found really just killed off Sir (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) in what ended up being its series finale. The NBC drama was canceled just one day after the penultimate episode of Season 2 aired.
The series finale wrapped up with Sir possibly dead — Trent (Brett Dalton) found him seriously injured and bleeding in his cell — and Gabi (Shanola Hampton) confessing to the world that she’d held him in her basement (after he’d kidnapped her as a child). Below, showrunner Nkechi Okoro Carroll breaks down the finale and teases what we could have seen next. Plus, read a deep dive into the finale with Shanola Hampton here. (Note: This interview was conducted prior to Found‘s cancellation.)
When did you know you were going to end Season 2 with Gabi telling the world she held Sir in her basement just as Sir may be dead in his cell?
Nkechi Okoro Carroll: When I pitched the show. I’ve known all along. Sir and Gabi’s movements and the game of cat and mouse between them and what Gabi’s healing journey looks like and what it needs have always been sort of puzzle pieces that have been plotted out over the course of several seasons, and obviously, the actors are so phenomenal and they elevate these characters so much that I then get inspired. But the backbone of that journey and knowing where we were going to come to at the end of Season 1 with Sir’s escape and then where we were going to come to at the end of Season 2 in terms of Gabi needing to confess and it seeming like Sir finally got what was coming to him, those have been there since I very first pitched the show.
Matt Miller / NBC
Why did Gabi feel like she had to do that now? And talk about her reclaiming her full name for herself.
Thank you for noticing that moment. That is in a very important part of the journey. She spent all of Season 1 trying to figure out how to atone for her sins and every avenue that she had for atonement would get thwarted in a way. And while most people would see that as victory, like Sir didn’t press charges, you get to be free and he’s imprisoned, she personally, because of who she is, what she fundamentally believes in, knows that until she has to pay the price for what she did, she cannot fully heal. As long as she feels like she’s wearing this mask in front of the rest of the world who she’s asking to step up and be good people and do the right thing and be honest and help find missing people, but all this time she’s misrepresenting herself to the world, none of that, now that she’s on her legitimate healing journey, feels right with her. And so finally she spent all season searching for ways to atone when she finally was able to have a conversation with the rabbi, she’s looking for atonement. When she’s having conversations with priests and different people, she was looking everywhere she could get for an answer to, “How do I atone for what I did?” Like, yes, vengeance, all the good stuff, yes, he kidnapped her and she gave as good as she got, yes, all those things.
But for who Gabi Mosely is on the inside, she needed to take that journey. And this is the ultimate laying yourself bare, right? This is the ultimate taking off of the masks, taking off all the presentation stuff that Sir taught her in terms of how she should always be dressed up and the way that her makeup is always done and her hair is always done and her wardrobe is just on fire, all of that is part of the mask she wears to be able to function in the world. And she realized she needed to lay it all bare, including her sins, in order for her to really complete a healing journey where she can finally put her to bed.
What can you say about what the consequences for Gabi could look like in a Season 3?
Gabi is not expecting special treatment. She did not make that announcement thinking that, okay, well, my connections with the police and the good I’ve done in the world and everything are going to absolve me of what any other criminal who confesses will have to go through. She is not looking for the easy out. What the rest of the world wants from her may be a different story, but Gabi herself is not looking for the easy out.
What can you say about what happened to Sir and his fate? Could this be part of a plan of his?
I mean, Sir is always a good six steps ahead — okay, maybe one or two steps ahead, but he’s always got a plan. But in addition to Sir always having a plan, he has also angered a lot of people, not just Gabi. And essentially, over the course of the back half of the season, slowly but surely, those chickens were coming home to roost. And so what I can say is what happened to him is a mystery that will be solved — not immediately. It’ll take time to sort of get to the bottom of what happened to him and why, but it is a mystery that will be solved.
How much would Mark-Paul be part of a Season 3?
What I can tell you is Mark-Paul is very much part of a Season 3.
Matt Miller / NBC
Was there any part of Lena that was tempted to go out the back door and run forever?
Of course, of course. The practical side of her thought about it, but she’s been so conditioned and so groomed by Sir. Gabi was groomed by Sir for a year. Lena was for the majority of her formative years, it was a good heavy portion of her life; that is a lot of programming to undo. So of course she thought about it, but the truth is she was set on this path a very long time ago, and it is not something that she can easily overcome. We’re watching how hard it is for Gabi to get her life back and feel like she has ownership over herself, her decisions, her thoughts, that they’re not being manipulated by Sir, and that was one year with him versus how long Lena lived with him as his sister.
Would Lena be part of a Season 3?
Anything is possible.
What did you want to do with Dhan by bringing in Mike at this point? Because it seems like Dhan’s past trauma could be the focal point of a third season.
Absolutely. I mean, one of the things that is a part of the formula of the show and honestly a part of the show that I’m extremely proud of is we take our time with each character and give them their moment in the sun to peel back the layers and legitimately take them on their healing journey. We did a good portion of it with Gabi in Season 1. We did it with Lacey and Margaret in Season 2, and we now have Dhan and Zeke who are both — we’ve sort of peeled back a little bit of the onion on both of them in terms of their backstories and filled in pieces of the puzzle. But both of their stories still have huge journeys to take. And yeah, one of the reasons why we ended the season on the case we ended it on is because, with everything that is going on with Dhan, with where he is with his husband, with how important Gabi is to his life and the decisions Gabi is making, Dhan is going to have to look himself in the mirror and finally deal with some things from his past.
It seems like it’s never going to be the right time for Gabi and Trent yet they keep getting drawn back together. It’s clear how much they care about each other. What have you wanted to do with that relationship and could they have a future?
Oh, of course they could have a future. There’s always a possibility, and I believe in unicorns and rainbows and happy endings and everything. That is me. Gabi may not believe that she’s deserving of all of that, but I believe in that. And so of course there’s a future there for them. The question is how long of a journey is it going to take for them to get to that future, and when will both of them be ready? Because they both have journeys they need to take before they feel they can step into that relationship hole.
Did you ever seriously consider having Jamie not really be Jamie?
Not during this season. I knew what the arc was this season, but sure, as I was developing the show and fleshing out Margaret’s character and her storyline and everything, of course, you explore every iteration of, what if it is Jamie? What if it isn’t Jamie? What does that do to Margaret? But for me, this journey we took Margaret on, and for the character of Jamie and his healing, it felt like this is what it needed to be.
Was there ever a world in which Gabi shot Lena?
Listen, if it meant saving a life, there’s always a world. Gabi is a by-any-means-necessary kind of girl, and no matter how much she wants to atone for her sins, that’s always been part of her personality and that is never going to change. You do what you have to do to save a life. And if Lena poses a threat to lives, Gabi will not hesitate to save them by any means necessary. But in that moment, in that episode, that was part of the journey Gabi needed to take to release the hold that the Evans family has on her.
That was such a good scene.
Oh, yay. It was one of my favorites of the season. I’m glad you enjoyed it. I mean, listen, you’ve got Shanola Hampton and you’ve got Danielle, they’re just gifted, gifted actresses. And so a scene like that, you give them the material and then you get out of the way and you sit gleefully in the corner and watch those two women act their butts off and do their magic.
Lacey and Zeke’s romance has been complicated. Both clearly have things they need to work on as individuals. You talked about Zeke’s trauma is something that needs to be explored in a deep way, but what can you say about that relationship?
What I can say is it is important to both of them. At the heart of it, whatever it looks like, whether it looks like a romantic relationship or a more platonic one or anything, they are very important to each other and them coming back together at the end of the season was them proving that point. Now what the best version of that relationship looks like for them moving forward is what they need to explore together, but it is something they want to explore.
Trent says that the police department can fire him, he is helping to find Jamie. It seems like there’s always going to be that for his character, being torn between his badge and M&A. Is that something we’re going to continue to see play out for as long as the show is on?
His moral compass and his moral code of what’s right and wrong, and the oath he took to save lives are constantly going to be at war in him because he is not someone who necessarily, while he believes in rules, believes in hierarchy. He is someone who believes in saving lives and the more time he spends with M&A and the more he gets pulled into the way they do things, of course that is going to cause some self-reflection in him of, where’s my line in the sand and how close do I get to it and making sure he doesn’t cross it. And so that’s constantly going to be part of his character’s development as he continues to grow and learn some things about himself that he didn’t know that are going to cause him to really sort of look at things differently. But at the end of the day, badge or no badge, Trent as a human has a moral compass in him that is unwavering and has a line in the sand that may shift here and there, but it’s never going to disappear.
Because you talked about how you knew from the beginning about how Season 2 ended, were there any storylines that you significantly changed from this season from what you had originally planned?
That’s a good question. Not storylines necessarily. What happens is I will get so inspired by our amazing writers’ room and our brilliant actors that while the journey we take the character, sort of like where we start the character, where we end the character and their storyline may not change, but the journey of how they get through that storyline, that pivots all the time because everyone is sort of bringing their heart, their soul, their everything to it, and that adjusts it. For example, the actor who plays Jamie is just phenomenal. We love Parker. I actually ended up including Jamie in more scenes this season than I’d originally imagined including the character, because I genuinely loved the dynamic that Jamie now brought to M&A. I loved the way Parker played it. I loved the way he played off the other actors, and it was just such a joy to watch, and it got me energized for storylines that I included him. The storyline was always going to be what it was, but I definitely included him in a larger way because I was inspired by him.
What else can you tease about a third season?
What I’ll tease is if you think you’ve seen the craziest that M&A can go through both as a team and on an individual basis in their cases, in their ongoing battle with Sir, you haven’t seen anything yet.
Can you say anything about any storylines?
At the end of the day, what will continue to be the heart of the show are the cases that are so personally meaningful to our M&A team and to Trent and the nature of the cases that we will cover on the show to continue to draw attention to the forgotten ones. That will always continue to be a part of the show, and the character drama and the character dynamics that our fans, God bless them, we have such amazing fans, our Foundlings, that part of the show that they love so much that will absolutely continue and we will continue to peel back these layers on these characters that you think you probably know well by now. But the truth is we’ve only just started to scratch the surface.
Found, Streaming Now, Peacock