In From The Cold boss breaks down what the massive final twist means
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Warning: This article contains spoilers about In From The Cold season 1.
In From The Cold changed everything with a single phone call.
Single mom Jenny Franklin's (Margarita Levieva) secret life as former Russian operative Anya Petrova is exposed while on a trip to Europe with her daughter Becca (Lydia Fleming) by a disavowed CIA agent. The season chronicles her being forced to assume her former identity as The Whisper, an assassin with the ability to morph into other people, to uncover the truth behind a series of bizarre deaths. In the end, Jenny stops the plot orchestrated by Gideon (who turns out to be Jenny's own mother) and returns to America safely with her daughter and a budding romance with Chauncey (Cillian O'Sullivan), the CIA operative that pulled her back into her former life. Or did he?
In the closing moment, Jenny goes into her garage to retrieve a phone hidden in the ground, and tells an unknown person on the other end, "Agent Anya Petrova. Everything is fine. It worked." We may not know what Jenny (or Anya) is planning or why, but she's been in on everything from the very beginning.
We spoke to show creator Adam Glass about that surprise ending, how it changes everything that comes before it, what would happen in a potential season 2, and more.
Samantha López/Netflix
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How should we recontextualize everything we know about Jenny after that season finale twist?
ADAM GLASS: The only script I kept from [Levieva] was the final script because I didn't want to change how she was playing Jenny. What I wanted to do by the end was take all the power back, which is she's been in control the whole time and everything you've seen has been one giant act. She knew everything that happened and she put herself in this position. A season 2 would ask why she did this.
It calls into questions things like Chauncey's belief that he caught her.
He tells her that he got her dossier from somebody, and how do we know that wasn't her? He never met the person he got the dossier from. She didn't pick him, but she is involved in whatever is happening and she's playing everybody.
Chauncey asks if it's real, and Jenny kisses him and says, 'you tell me.' Then we see what she does. Can two things be true? She has a mission and may be falling for Chauncey. Are they going to come into a new season a little Mr. and Mrs. Smith and keep building their relationship while working together? In some ways, she's mirroring what happened to Anya, where she has to pick between love and country again.
What about at the start when she's struggling with becoming The Whisper again? If she's in on it, then is that in case the CIA is monitoring or is that real?
She's a spy and knows that she could be watched. It plays both ways and part of it is her maybe being upset at having to do this all again, but at the same time, somebody could be watching. [Jenny] is getting back in the saddle to do this, but is she doing it for Chauncey or the KGB?
Svetlana (Alyona Khmelnitskaya) is dead, but she did reach the senator and discuss controlling him before Jenny shoots her. Did her plan succeed, and will that come into play moving forward?
I hear you, and it's a really great question. In my head I think it dies with her. She's the head of the monster and half the reason [Jenny] shoots her is to stop her and to free her daughter. That doesn't mean that someone couldn't hijack that or touch that. You got me thinking.
How did you go about crafting such different and dynamic action sequences? Was there one that was your favorite or hardest to do?
I wanted to do a sort of homage to all of these different [on-screen fights]. I would say the first one is more Atomic Blonde, and that's how we would talk about them, almost from a movie viewpoint. The scene in the spa was Mission Impossible, specifically the scene with Tom Cruise and [Henry Cavill] fighting in the bathroom. I wanted that with women — where they just destroy the place. I had never seen that on film or television before, and that took two days to shoot.
Samantha López/Netflix
What was it like telling the story in multiple timelines? Will we be seeing other parts of her life in potential future seasons?
We say at the end of the season that Anya is going to New York and Chauncey tells us in the beginning that New York is where she becomes The Whisper. The plan for season 2 would be to follow her there and meet her new handler. We'll see her living a double life where she's in college at NYU and has friends. This is Anya's first time in American in the '90s; there's this freedom she's seeing for the first time. Remember, this is around when the wall fell and she disappeared into the cold. There's a lot going on for her as she learns about America and has this mission to start actually becoming the killer she becomes.
Chris (Charles Brice) is a wonderful addition to the central trio. Is there a path where he returns in the future?
Oh, it's Godfather 3. He tries to get out, but we will pull him back in for sure. Chris is coming back. There's no peaceful life for him. He's now part of this journey and the question is what side does he end up on? That is if he has to choose eventually choose between Chauncey and Jenny. He's a big, big part of the show moving forward.
What made you want to incorporate ice skating as part of the series?
I've seen the gymnast thing a million times in Russian stories. I wanted something different. I wanted a different sport and there's something about the cold. When I went to Spain to scout, I found out like the No. 1 skater in the world is from Spain. Also, in ice skating, either you make it by the time you're 18 or out. That's the whole other thing for Becca. She gets there and it's this is it or it's probably over, and she'll move onto the next part of her life.
Samantha Lopez/Netflix Margarita Levieva as Jenny
Whether Jenny shot Svetlana for her mission or to protect Becca, she kills her mother. How will that impact her moving forward?
She falls to the ground and says mama in Russian then grabs [Svetlana]. We tried to do it in the backstory, even though at the time you don't know it was her mother, that she wasn't all bad. She could be evil, but even with that she just wants her daughter to survive, so she was hard on her. Then she'd have these moments where she tells her love isn't freedom and tells the whole backstory about herself. Moving forward, she does eventually have to tell Becca the truth, or she'll discover the truth. She's gonna learn about Svetlana and realize her mother killed her grandmother to save her. It's a messed up dynamic. There's something Shakespearean about it. Jenny can take what she had to do, but she cannot take something happening to Becca.
What I love is that Svetlana can stay alive in the past, so it's not the last you'll see of her.
The final Anya reveal suggests a larger plan. How many seasons of this show do you have mapped out?
I have a three-year plan, but if the show blows up and Netflix said five-year arc, I'd figure it out. From the moment it started, I saw it in three parts. I always figure out the beginning and end then just figure out how to get there. It's almost like a puzzle. That's the great thing about a writers' room and having great writers who are able to go in and connect all the dots I put up on the board.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
In From The Cold is currently streaming on Netflix.
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