La Brea Boss Unpacks the Season 2 Finale’s Back to the Future-y Twist and That Dino-Mite Reveal

Matt Webb Mitovich
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La Brea Boss Unpacks the Season 2 Finale’s Back to the Future-y Twist and That Dino-Mite Reveal
La Brea Boss Unpacks the Season 2 Finale’s Back to the Future-y Twist and That Dino-Mite Reveal

The following contains spoilers from the La Brea Season 2 finale.

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NBC’s La Brea, with its double-episode season finale, gift-wrapped for the survivors a way home. Alas

, en route to this new portal, Gavin suffered a fatal injury when a cave creature lobed him onto a stalagmite. The fix? Eve and Izzy pulled a Back to the Future and used Dr. Moore’s portal to leap back in time just a bit, to warn Gavin of this danger.

Were they successful? You betcha! Sadly, the survivors decided to spend an awful lot of time getting ready for their trip home, during which time a tied-up James broke free of his restraints and got into a tussle with his son. Gavin wound up having to put down his mad dad, and due to damage caused by stray bullets, the machine started to malfunction. Everyone made a dash for the exit, but Eve wound up trapped behind the heavy, locked door, and as the portal violently pulsed, she blipped away to… somewhere/somewhen.

Elsewhere, Veronica and Lucas learned that they are expecting a baby (if the muscle car is rockin’, don’t come knockin’!)… Riley discovered that her parents had been in the process of divorcing, after which Sam got hit on by a really cute Clearing member… Levi made a deal with Kira to dig up a box from inside the fort, in trade for Ty’s cancer-curing pills, and though Silas finagled his way into the deal (to earn a pardon from Paara), Ty did wind up with his meds… Scott met a young girl named Petra who 1) pretended to only speak German and 2) is the daughter of the woman Scott was to have a job interview with when the L.A. sinkhole opened… and concurrent with Eve’s vanishing, a bazillion auroras appeared in the sky, allowing people and (apparently dinosaurs!) from other times to drop in on 10,000 B.C.

Whew!

TVLine spoke with series creator and showrunner David Appelbaum about the finale’s big reveals and to get fun teases for Season 3, which starts filming in about a month….

TVLINE | I asked you a similar question at the end of Season 1 finale: Are there educated guesses to be made about where-slash-when Eve just went?
What we saw at the end of Season 2 were a lot of different dates that popped up on that computer screen [in Dr. Moore’s portal chamber]. I think what we want to believe is that she could have gone anywhere in time. That’ll be one of the mysteries of Season 3 — where did Eve go? — and we’re going to be trying to find her and trying to figure that out.

TVLINE | When Levi and Ty entered the outdoor portal to go back to the lab with Eve and Izzy, I thought you might play with a time paradox there. I literally yelled at my screen, “No!,” because another Levi and Ty could be arriving soon at that same location. You could have had them meeting each other.
That’s true. That did not come to pass. It is possible in that version of the world that they met another version [of themselves], but that’s not something that we ended up playing.

TVLINE | Unless, I was thinking, James wound up executing them to get the box in the original timeline. Then they would never have shown up.
No, he did not kill them.

TVLINE | With all of the auroras that opened up in the sky at the end, is the basic gist of Season 3 that at any given moment, around any given corner, we aren’t going to know who they might run into, and from when?
I think that’s one of the fun ideas. As you saw at the end of Season 2, there are definitely dinosaurs…

TVLINE | Right, but there could also be, like, pilgrims!
There could also be pilgrims. Yeah, we’re going to open up some new avenues to reveal new people and new things that are down here. The basic premise of the show is that anything could come down here, and in Season 3 we’re going to be able to exploit that in the biggest way, because we’ve opened up all these auroras.

TVLINE | What are we calling the group that uses that four-hexagon logo seen on the business card in Scott’s wallet and on Levi’s tattooed arm?
That’s actually a mystery that we’re reserving for Season 3. The people behind that group are the same people who occupy that military base that we see in the photo in Episode 14, and they’re going to become a central part of Season 3 — “Who are they?” and their connection to all of this. We’re going to be investigating them — and their connection to Gavin, specifically.

TVLINE | Since Scott had been on his way to a job interview with the hexagon company, was he being “groomed” for something?


He wasn’t being groomed per se, but he will have a surprising connection to this group that he won’t have realized.

TVLINE | Is there anything to glean from the logo itself being linked hexagons? Or is it just pretty?
Nothing that I want to give away just yet.

TVLINE | OK. Petra (played by Asmara Feik). Now, help me out here. The girl who looks just like Lucas and Veronica… is not their grown-up daughter??
She’s not their grown-up daughter. But that’s interesting!

La Brea Finale Explained
La Brea Finale Explained

TVLINE | She has the same eyes as Lucas, and the same face as Veronica. I thought for sure I saw that twist coming a mile away.


That’s so funny. She is not Lucas and Veronica’s daughter, although they will continue to be pregnant when we get into Season 3. Them figuring out how to potentially raise a child in 10,000 B.C. is one of the stories that we’re telling. But no, Petra is not their daughter.

TVLINE | Petra’s mother was the woman that Scott was supposed to have a job interview with?
Yes, Maya Schmidt. We don’t know where she is, but she’s going to become a central figure in Season 3 and we’re going to realize that she’s part of this central mythology and holds a lot of secrets. She may actually be very useful for us in our quest to figure out what’s going on and how we might actually end up getting home.

TVLINE | And the barracks that Scott saw in Petra’s photo….
Those are somewhere to be found in 10,000 B.C.

TVLINE | What do you want to say about Clearing resident Catherine (played by Home and Away‘s Amali Golden), who was just conspicuously introduced?
The idea behind Catherine is that for the first two seasons, we’ve been talking about Sam wanting to go back to his old life, but by the end of Season 2 he’s made a decision to move on and start things new down here. Catherine is not really a new relationship per se. She’s more representative of Sam’s decision. He’s not going to have a romantic relationship with her necessarily, but he may end up having new romantic relationships and a new emotional connection with people in Season 3, now that he’s moving on from his connection to his wife that he’s held onto.

TVLINE | Those magically appearing divorce papers that Riley found, that read to me like you just want Sam available for romantic action in Season 3.
We want him to be, yes. He’s had these divorce papers the whole time, and he’s hoped the whole time that “when I do get home, I’ll be able to fix things.”

TVLINE | Has he had them “the whole time” though, David..? Or did he only start having them when you got deep into writing Season 2 and decided they’d suddenly appear in his backpack?
[Laughs] I can’t reveal my secrets.

TVLINE | Once they got Moore’s portal fired up, Ty’s plan was to stay behind, right? He wasn’t just going to jump through and not say goodbye to Paara.
Ty was never going to leave, because by the end of Episode 13 has has gotten the cancer medication back, and more importantly he has Paara and that’s where his life is. He wanted to help his friends, but his life is here now.

TVLINE | Coming out of Season 2, are you now 100-percent out of portals? Or is there a backup backup one inside another cave somewhere?
We’re not jumping into a portal at the beginning of Season 3, but this is a show about getting home. They’re never going to lose their desire to do that. We’re not running back to a portal immediately, but they’re going to have to find a way home somehow, whether it’s through a portal or some other means.

La Brea Season 2 Finale Explained
La Brea Season 2 Finale Explained

TVLINE | Before James died, Gavin learned he has a sister. Is she younger, older…? Has she been cast yet?


She has not been cast yet, but she is going to be. I can’t say her age just yet, but she is one of the fun mysteries that we’re going to unfold as we get into Season 3.

TVLINE | But it’s nobody that we’ve met yet? It’s not, like, Petra?
I don’t want to reveal it. We’ll see what happens.

TVLINE | As of right now, you only have a six-episode order for Season 3. Are you prepared to wrap everything up by the end of those six? (Deadline reported that with the shortened order, which was informed by the possible WGA strike, the cast is being released from their contracts after Season 3.) 
We’re not planning to wrap it up. We’re flexible at this point. No official decision has been made about wrapping things up, so we’re staying flexible with our storytelling. We’re just trying to tell a satisfying story and seeing what comes.

TVLINE | But from a practical point, you have to have your scripts done by May 1 (when the current WGA contract expires) or something?
Right now they’ve given us six episodes and we’re going to be flexible. They might add more episodes as this sort of progresses, but there haven’t been any official decisions. A lot of that stuff is still kind of in flux.

Want scoop on La Brea Season 3, or for any other show? Email InsideLine@tvline.com and your question may be answered via Matt’s Inside Line.

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