“Mary & George” creator breaks down that murderous finale

"It's one and done," says creator D.C. Moore. "We've made a lot of noise, we've made a lot of mess. We've been dirty and filthy and now we've gone."

Warning: This article contains spoilers about the Mary & George finale, "War."

All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put James back together again...

The lusty Starz drama Mary & George has come to an end, and with it, so have the lives of King James (Tony Curran) and George Villiers (Nicholas Galitzine). The limited series barreled toward its bloody conclusion with a one-two punch of murders.

First, George, newly returned from a failed mission in Spain to marry James' son Charles to the Infanta, stokes the flames of war. He wins over an ailing James by distracting him with a sexy bower in the woods. But when James learns the truth of George's action, he threatens to have his head. George acts first, suffocating James with his pillow as he suffers from a fit. Mary (Julianne Moore) simply looks on, bearing witness to the monster she helped to create.

But George's reprieve is a brief one. The series also shows us his end, when he is stabbed in the stomach by an angry soldier he encounters in a tavern. When Mary receives the news, she is unmoved, a part of her knowing it would always comes to this. Instead, she surveys the household she has built, in part through George, and takes pride in the legacy she has created.

We called up series creator D.C. Moore to get all the details on killing a king, diverging from historical record, why he didn't want to get too into the weeds of George's life during the reign of King Charles III, and why he only ever wanted Mary & George to be one season.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You really have quite the twist here, which is you have George suffocate James. I know the book The King's Assassin was your inspiration, and has this supposition that George might've killed James, but it's more focused on poisoning. What drove this choice of this mode of killing and having George be the one behind it? 

D.C. MOORE: Not just the book. A lot of people at the time thought that Mary and George had been involved. The reality is that if they did do it, it probably was more related to a medical way of doing it. But I do feel like sometimes you want to more lean into the spirit of something that happened. And the key thing I think with James and George — James was a king of peace and George became a harbinger of war. He killed his legacy. James' whole legacy was about, 'I was brought up with violence and beef and kidnaps and murder and betrayal. Everyone's been trying to f--- me over my whole life. I hate all of it. Please, everyone stop fighting.' So, when he gets to England, pretty much the first thing he does as king is negotiate a treaty with Spain.

It's true that George felt so emasculated by what happened in Spain that when he came back he was gunning for war, and he'd literally just gone to Spain to try and broker a peace in a marriage. It feels like that came from a very personal place of pique. So, the more medical poisoning felt a bit too considered. It needed to be more in the heat of the moment. You have to adapt things in order to bring them towards you. George feels like someone who was a passionate man of the senses.

Related: Nicholas Galitzine broke his ankle thanks to his high-heeled shoes on Mary & George

The dramatic choices aside, do you believe that George murdered King James?

I don't know, but I'm very interested. Some things you just have to accept. I trust [historian and author] Benjamin Woolley's instincts. I completely trust. But as a dramatist, you've got to lean into different instincts. But to be honest, I feel like I'd find him guilty in a court just because of all the other s--- he did, which was much worse. All the wars he launched, the many who died for no reason at all. He really helped us set the groundwork for the English Civil War. So, I would find him guilty by association, and I wouldn't mind if he was innocent of that particular crime because maybe he deserves it for all the other people he was responsible for killing.

We don't get to spend a ton of time with George after this murder. Do you think that this was a difficult decision for him or that he has any sense of regret?

Absolutely. Before, during, and immediately afterwards, there is a sense of regret. And Nick really sells that. But I do also think that not very soon afterwards he would've shifted his perspective and moved on. The real George did just that. Charles became his conduit for power, and then, George was so unpopular by the time he died, they had to bury him at night because otherwise there'd be riots. The engraving on his tombstone is the most defensive thing I've ever read on a tomb. The subtext is, "Despite all the things you heard, he was a great guy."

You could have done a version of the show that was a lot more protracted with a first season that's just George's ascent to being the favorite. And then you could have done a whole season that was only the three years post James' death. Why was a one-season arc the way to go?

One of the things that I'm proudest of is that I got to cast some of the most phenomenal actors. If you're saying you're signing people up for two, three, four seasons, some people are a bit more wary. But if you say, will you do a week or two for us? You can be more nimble. You're much less likely to get someone like Julianne Moore if it's a returning series. Initially, we did talk about two or three seasons. But it just felt, "No, this should feel special" and all of the story is there. He is born and he dies. Once Mary has been pushed out [of] the picture, it feels less interesting. The three of them is the dynamic. We all felt like this is a one-off event, and we've got one shot at this, let's f---ing do it. I feel that specialness. I don't think any of us think [another season] would be a good idea. It's one and done. We've made a lot of noise, we've made a lot of mess. We've been dirty and filthy and now we've gone. I'm quite happy with that.

George did live these three years after James, and made the biggest mess of his life in those three years. Was there a version where you had one more episode where we got into that a little bit? Or did you feel like there was too much there? 

I'm going to turn this into a sex metaphor, but it felt a bit post-coital. We've come to the end. It just felt like you'd be starting again, and we didn't need it. With Mary and George, we're telling their story together. Mary would be less and less involved, and it would become more about wrongdoing. And I hope the show isn't just about wrongdoing. It's about people playing the only game that is available to rise while the game is afoot. All of the most powerful people at the time were chucking hot young men in front of James hoping to influence him. This was the game of the court and the era. And once that game is over, I'm less intrigued.

Related: Nicholas Galitzine shot 4 sex scenes with different partners in 1 day on Mary & George

Then, you have George's murder here at the end. It's pretty much exactly what historians know to have happened. Was that a case of, I can't make this more dramatic than it already is?

I did add the hook-up quality. This guy had fought in that exact battle. He was bitter about it. He was partly bitter about pay as well. It had been a disaster. It had been ill-conceived. He did stab him to death in a tavern. But I don't think that he was letting George think that they might sleep together. That is not in history books, that is me adding. But it feels great that George would mistake death for sex. That feels so part of him. And then the other thing that is really true is how unmoved Mary was when she found out. That's something we've really tried to capture. Everyone knew this would happen. No shock at all.

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Did you feel that Mary thought this was how it was always going to end from the moment she sent him to France? Or is her reaction more a function of her being pushed out and his growing unpopularity?

In early drafts, she saw it when she held him after he was born. She always had a sense that something that burned that brightly would eventually burn out. But once he's falling beyond her grasp, she knows where this is going to end. She can see the way this is going. There's a sort of inevitability to it. There is a bit of Frankenstein's monster to it. You create this thing and then once it's out of your control, it's inevitable that s--- is going to get it dark. And it really did. He really was creating needless wars. His corruption was off the charts. He could play [politically] at the top level, but he didn't know how to play to the people. So, he was absolutely hated by the end. From everything I've read, Mary was so canny and so saw so much coming and was so smart. She's someone who knew for five years that this is where it was going to go.

We get to this final shot of Mary where she's surveying her family and George's empty chair. What did you want us to take away from that?

We wanted a few different things, so I don't want to lay into any one meaning, but ultimately this is someone who has built a legacy. She has her kids, her title, she has a very big house, she's got heirs. That family's still going in various forms. She created a lasting legacy for her family. And George's death was obviously regretful and the manner of it is not great. But she survived. The family survived and she created something. She achieved something, which given what she started with, is genuinely incredible.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.