Luke Kirby and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel creator on Lenny Bruce's airport goodbye

Warning: This article contains spoilers from episodes 1-3 of season 5 of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

Lenny Bruce has flown off into the sunset.

In the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel season 5 premiere, while taking Alfie (Gideon Glick) to the airport for his first ever out-of-town gig, Midge Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan) runs into an old friend — Lenny Bruce (Luke Kirby). It's the first time they've seen each other since he lit into her on the stage of Carnegie Hall, telling her that if she blows her career opportunities, it will break his heart.

The two are a bit cagey with each other at first, and Lenny reveals he's off to California where he'll be renting a house and spending more time with his kid (and, for those that know the details of the real Bruce's life, likely beginning the downward spiral that ends with his death from an overdose in 1966).

"Sorry I didn't call," he tells Midge of failing to notify her of his move. A statement Kirby believes he genuinely means. "Why not?" he says to EW. "He got busy. That happens. Especially Lenny Bruce. He's a busy guy."

Philippe Antonello/Prime Rachel Brosnahan and Luke Kirby on 'The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel'

Then there's his abundance of legal woes, which we get a glimpse of when stacks of paperwork fall out his briefcase. "I was taking into consideration the degree of exhaustion that he is clearly at, at that point," Kirby adds of his more fatalistic air in the scene. "Under the heft of all of that litigation, it's another level of exhaustion. He's expressed his tiredness to her in the past, but this is something that is clearly trying to snuff out some light, and I wanted that to be part of that for sure."

Kirby also surmises that Bruce has been thinking about Midge ever since their night together and their fight at Carnegie Hall. "You know how those things are, they find a way to linger like a worm in your brain for multiple lifetimes," he muses. "Midge has certainly found her way into his wheel of love. How can he not be somewhat stirred by it? The words that he speaks to her at Carnegie Hall are really true and they mean something. Seeing her is a reminder of that truth."

Fans will remember that Brosnahan was long against any romantic consummation between Lenny and Midge. But after filming a love scene between them last season, she's changed her mind. "It felt so rare to have a friendship between two people who were, not at all equals in a lot of ways, but who were intellectual equals, and who admired each other and who were both ambitious and f—ing unapologetic about it. It felt really rare to see a friendship like that between a man and a woman that didn't veer into something romantic," she explains. "When [creator] Amy Sherman-Palladino told me, I had a moment of like, 'No, no, what?' But frankly, as soon as I saw the scene and how it actually happened, it felt worthy of the relationship that had been created between the two of them. Of course it changed something, but it actually didn't feel like it changed anything. And that's the best part about it."

Amazon Studios Luke Kirby and Rachel Brosnahan on 'The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel'

What does change their relationship is their argument at Carnegie Hall, the elephant in the room when they cross paths at the airport (a scene which they shot at the former TWA terminal at JFK airport in what is now the TWA Hotel). Midge is the one to bring it up, promising to Lenny that she isn't going to blow it, which he says he will hold her to.

"He puts what she says in an 'Okay, now show me,' kind of place," adds Kirby. "He doesn't take the hook of sentiment, but he definitely will take somebody at their word and watch to see how that word grows."

The scene is played as a farewell, and Sherman-Palladino sees it as such in sending Midge into the final leg of her journey to breaking out as a star. "We were in 1961. He was about to hit his downward spiral," Sherman-Palladino reflects. "We talked a lot about what more did we need from the character? That moment on stage of Carnegie Hall, everything between her and Lenny has been leading to that moment, not the moment where they sleep together."

Amazon Prime Rachel Brosnahan and Luke Kirby on 'The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel'

"Once that happened," she continues, "especially since it was the tail end of our journey, Midge needed to then get herself in gear and get herself to where she needed to go. But we wanted to check in with Lenny. We didn't want to leave with the sadness of Lenny. We wanted to leave with the moments that Midge would take with her and lean back on. When things are bleak and things aren't going the way she wants, that's the stuff that she wants to remember from her time with Lenny. But we also wanted to see that this business can eat you alive. The loneliness and travel, it's a treacherous business to be in and it can do terrible things, even to the strongest and the most gifted. That was another thing we wanted to show. You make your decision to lead that lonelier life, and you have to be strong enough to endure it."

For his part, Kirby wasn't sure if this airport scene was his goodbye to Midge. But he certainly felt it was weightier than many other scenes they'd shared. "I didn't know where the season was going to go," he says. "But I definitely played it differently than any other time that we've said goodbye to each other. Something about that red hall gave me an instinct that this was a little different from our prior encounters."

Whether Lenny might return, fans will have to wait and see.

The final season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is now streaming on Prime Video with new episodes dropping every Friday through May 26.

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