Good Behavior EP Chad Hodge breaks down that deep dive into Letty's mind
Warning: This story contains spoilers from the season 2 finale of Good Behavior.
Los Angeles isn’t going to know what hit it.
Good Behavior’s whirlwind season 2 finale found Letty (Michelle Dockery) and Javier (Juan Diego Botto) scrambling to burn two bodies: Teo (Juan Riedinger) and an innocent security guy (Brian Baumgartner), both killed by Letty.
“Letty’s always protecting herself and then destroying herself at the same time. That’s a very Letty moment,” co-creator Chad Hodge tells EW. “She will always live with the fact that she’s killed two people, and it doesn’t go away.”
But while Letty’s conscience is marked, the evidence is in the rearview mirror — specifically, in the back of a charred van in the wetlands. After doing what they could to cover their tracks, the con woman and the assassin collected Teo’s drugs and fled the South for the desert. We left the couple on the outskirts of L.A., where they plan to sell off the stash … and maybe work on their tans. EW caught up with Hodge to get the scoop on Letty and Javier’s future (which, on screen at least, is still up in the air; the TNT drama has yet to be renewed for a third season) and why Los Angeles is a natural fit for the show.
Javier had that line recently about how they’re the ones who pull each other back from the ledge, and in this episode he tells Letty to stop running from him because they always end up together. Is this the end of the back-and-forth? Are they all in?
They’re pretty all in now, until the next thing happens. Because they’ve been all in before, and then bad things happen and they pull away from each other. But yes, I think they’ve now voiced something that they hadn’t voiced before …. Whenever people ask me, “Are Letty and Javier good for each other or bad for each other?” the answer is that line of dialogue from Javier: We don’t destroy each other, we pull each other back from the ledge. And this last episode is the perfect example. She has killed two people, and he pulls her back from the ledge of lying, killing herself, running away, and he helps her clean it up and get rid of the bodies. She does the same for him in an emotional [way]: His brother was killed, his sister just left, people have been trying to kill him all season, and she’s been the one there for him. So they’re good together! [Laughs] In a way. They’re each other’s survival mechanism.
Now they’re in the desert. If we get a season 3, what can we expect?
Letty and Javier have obviously gotten themselves into a world of s— in the South, so they need to disappear …. I think it’s not just about “Let’s sell these drugs,” because of course you can sell drugs anywhere, but to disappear. And where do you go to disappear? A big city. The tone of the show we always refer to as poetic noir, and L.A. is where noir was born, so bringing them into L.A. and doing a modern L.A. noir — it’s not them in Beverly Hills and Rodeo Drive and Letty having Pretty Woman shopping montages, although I’m sure there would be one. But the outskirts of L.A. and the dark, seedy [side] …. There’s an overarching story that I have planned for season 3 that I hope we get to do, but I thought it was time to put them in a different place. Because after all, they’re criminals, and criminals don’t stay in one place for too long.
How’s Jacob (Nyles Julian Steele) going to factor into all of this?
Jacob, as we see in season 2, is pretty immediately affected by his experience and time with Letty and Javier, and starts to sort of act out. They’re recognizing some traits in Jacob that are similar to when Letty was a kid, and that will continue a little bit because look at what this kid has been through only in 10 or 20 episodes …. As he gets older, how does this affect him? Does he want to be with Letty? Does he not? There’s a runaway story that I have planned for him.
Christian (Terry Kinney) and Lashever (Ann Dowd) were a blast this season. What’s next for them?
I love Christian and Lashever, and Terry and Ann are so amazing together. While I don’t know exactly what [the story] will be, my thoughts are that it has something to do with the book Christian’s writing about Letty. It’s very meta in a way — because this show is loosely based on short stories, three short stories about Letty [by executive producer Blake Crouch] — to come full circle, and Christian tries to publish his book and then tries to turn it into a TV show or something.
Letty vetoed fictional Letty enrolling in college. Do you have a new ending in mind for his story?
Not yet, but that would be something I could come up with in like 10 seconds. There are so many versions. Christian’s writing about Letty is the most fun writing to do. [Laughs]
Was there anything else we should take from this finale?
In this episode, we get to use this device of Letty bargaining and negotiating with herself with the security guy, which is another tool in our toolbox now going forward. Because Letty isn’t all that emotive or verbose. She’s not a person who sits there and talks about her feelings, and Javier certainly isn’t. Sometimes they do, a little bit. But now if we wanted Letty to have a scene with Jacob, she could be talking with Jacob and suddenly Jacob’s not really there. To go even deeper into her head is something I want to do in season 3.
