‘Rectify’ Exclusive: Ray McKinnon Talks Final Season, and a Sneak Peek at the Season 4 Cast Photo
We, no doubt like all other Rectify fans, are excited about the Sundance TV drama’s upcoming fourth season, but a look at this Yahoo TV exclusive premiere of the cast’s Season 4 photo also brings a sad reminder: Season 4 is Rectify’s last, which means we soon face a TV landscape with these intense, complicated, and ultimately endearing Southerners.
Will Daniel Holden (Aden Young) — freed after spending 19 years in prison for a murder he may or may have not committed, but still haunted and taunted by his hometown community for the crime — finally have a chance at peace now that he’s been forced to move away from his Paulie, Georgia home? Will his sister, Amantha (Abigail Spencer), whose identity is wrapped up in a decades-long effort to prove Daniel’s innocence, get a chance to forge a life of her own in Daniel’s absence? Will Janet (J. Smith-Cameron), Daniel’s mother, be able to forgive herself, and repair fractured relationships with her husband and stepson without the constant presence of Daniel to reminder her of the many ways the entire family has suffered right along with Daniel?
Related: 5 Reasons Why You Need to Start Watching ‘Rectify’
Rectify series creator Ray McKinnon — the Oscar-winning filmmaker who TV fans also know from his onscreen roles in Deadwood and Sons of Anarchy — doesn’t promise to give us a definite answer on whether or not Daniel did kill teen girlfriend Hanna all those years ago, but he teased a final run of episodes that he thinks will make for a satisfying conclusion to the Peabody Award-winning series.
“I’ve said before, and I think it still holds up, that on the most macro of levels, the story is an individual’s existential journey through his life, and all the other characters’ own existential journeys,” McKinnon tells Yahoo TV. “We could have left the show after Season 1, or Season 2, or Season 3, or Season 16 if some of the characters were still alive. Their lives would go on, and there would be interesting things, too, about their lives that would happen in that period.
“I think I’ve explored the story and the characters enough to at least feel good about me leaving it. You know, hopefully, the audience is going to have its own individual subjective experience to this journey if they decide to go on, you know, all four seasons. Hopefully they’ll feel… I don’t know what the word is, I don’t know if closure is the word… maybe, full.”
Rectify Season 4 premieres in October on Sundance TV.
