‘1883’ Season 1 Finale: LaMonica Garrett on Thomas’ Ending & Future With Noemi

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the 1883 Season 1 finale “This Is Not Your Heaven.”]

Elsa Dutton (Isabel May) can’t die, right? They have to find some way to save her.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case in the 1883 finale. The arrow to her liver does end up being her death, in the arms of her father James (Tim McGraw), in the spot she chooses. (The Duttons, they decide, will settle there so they can visit her.) And one year after that, we see Josef (Marc Rissmann) alive after losing his leg due to the snake bite, Thomas (LaMonica Garrett) and Noemi (Gratiela Brancusi) following through with their dreams to settle in a field with her kids, and Shea (Sam Elliott) enjoying the sunrise on the beach before hearing the gunshot.

Garrett looks back on Thomas’ journey, discusses filming what he called the hardest scene of the season, and more.

I was happy to see Thomas and Noemi getting that life they dreamed of at the end.

LaMonica Garrett: Yeah, and that was unexpected for me. When I was reading the scripts, each shootout towards the end of the season, I’m like, “here’s where Thomas gets it,” just in the back of my brain, “this is where it happens.” And then the more I keep reading… That’s when I told other people about this show, whatever you think is going to happen, if you think, oh yeah, it’s the same old Western, it’s the same old this, the same that, Taylor [Sheridan] turns it on its head and gives you something that you weren’t expecting. Thomas and Noemi’s ending is something I really didn’t expect, but it was beautiful to see.

Thomas could have survived, and she could have been killed too.

Yeah, the fact that they’re together and to me, how Thomas told Shea, maybe one of these kids has a kid and that kid grows up to change the world pretty much, the fact that Thomas is there with two of these kids that he talked about, to be there to kind of shepherd them into becoming men and to give them a life that he never had. He grew up with no parents, no father, no love figures, no people to help structure him and shape him to become a man. And when have you seen in westerns in general where the Black cowboy gets the girl and a happy ending? I can’t remember. So it’s special for a lot of reasons, but yeah, I’m happy for Thomas and Noemi.

Emerson Miller/Paramount+

There were quite a few significant losses along the way. I thought Elsa was going to make it, but you have to look at the times and the medicine available.

Root canals would take you out back then, so you get shot in the liver with an arrow… When you see television, it’s like, oh, they pulled the rabbit out of the hat and they kind of figured it out or some kind of happy ending, Sam comes in with some great Comanche medicine that no one knew about to save her. But everything about this show has been authentic and real, and it’s been hard to watch, but it’s been like you’re looking back in a mirror of history. It’s the reality. It’s what the Oregon Trail was back then. So a happy ending kind of would’ve defeated what the rest of the season did for us and how truthful it was.

How is Thomas feeling about the journey as a whole? The end made it worth it for him, right?

I think Thomas has seen the worst of what society has, but he’s always kept his hope, his humanity. That’s the thing I love about him, that he’s seen dark days, he doesn’t live in it. He makes a choice to wake up each morning and be positive and put one in front of the other. So I think him getting a relationship with Noemi, that’s something he didn’t expect, but I think that’s so good for Thomas because he knows how to use his hands. He knows how to use his weapons. He knows the terrain, he knows horses, he knows everything, but he’s never experienced love. He learned how to allow himself to be loved. I think that’s what we all pray for, just to have a life partner while we’re on this spinning rock, to share it with someone. He was sharing it with Shea before, but that was limited. That’s your buddy, but that’s as far as that can go.

Emerson Miller/Paramount+

I think him finding someone to share life with like that is special. The way Taylor wrote them coming together was so earned. It was so slow and it wasn’t forced on you. You just saw this budding, but you didn’t know how it was going to happen. The fact that they had that happy ending, knowing where they came from and how he tried to push her away was beautiful.

I like that Thomas and Shea’s bond was solid throughout, even and especially when they didn’t always agree, because it felt like the show needed that connection throughout it.

Yeah. They were brothers, and when you have a best friend, sometimes they tell you stuff that you might not want to hear, but it’s what you need to hear. Thomas and Shea had that brotherhood. Throughout the whole season, they kept that. I love how Taylor wrote it. It wasn’t a deal that Thomas was Black and Shea was white. They was just two cowboys that had each other’s backs. It was never mentioned. You watch out these other big westerns back in the day — Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, for instance — they didn’t talk about each other both being white cowboys. They were just cowboys, they were buddies and they did what they did. And to me, the fact that that was never spoken upon throughout the season, it was special. We were past that point. These are just cowboys out in the plains.

Does Thomas know what Shea did?

I think Thomas knows what Shea’s capable of – when Thomas kind of casually tells him, “I stop you from committing suicide in the morning,” and the first time you see them both on screen together is when he’s about to do it again. So Thomas has come to know this is Shea’s darkness that he knows about. So if he’s not there with him one morning, it could happen. But there’s also things in the writing as well. In one of the early episodes where Thomas tells Shea, we shouldn’t do this trip, we shouldn’t go. And he says he just wants to see it one last time, and once he sees it, “the world can open up and eat me, I’m done. I could be at the end of my days. And I’m good with that.” There’s a kind of an acceptance of reality with that, at some point Thomas might be on his own. And I think him finding someone came at the perfect time.

Emerson Miller/Paramount+

Talk about filming that scene with Josef’s leg. I definitely had to look away.

That was the hardest scene for me to shoot of the whole season. First of all, the saw that we used was like the size of an emery board, like a nail file. It wasn’t a big saw and whatever the prosthetic leg [was made of], it felt like actual skin and meat and the bone felt like a real bone. I don’t know how it looked, but the noise that it made when you were sawing through the bone, after the scene was over, all the actors had to go to their separate corners and kind of take a minute to themselves just to gather themselves. We heard that sound, talking about it a few days later, woke up in the middle of the night, hearing that noise. I don’t know if the camera picked that up or the mic picked that up, for the realness of what we were experiencing on the day. But that was challenging.

It took like five minutes to actually saw through the leg. I don’t know how long it was on camera, but my fingers were numb. My shoulder was going numb. And Sam was saying, physically, I was probably the only one there that could have really sawed through that. It was tough. That was a rough scene. I was telling people like that would be one of those scenes where people might have to look away, but it’s real. That’s what happened on the Trail. That’s what happened in war, and Thomas was familiar with it. So it goes back to the authenticity and just the realness of where they were at and the time.

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What was your favorite scene to film?

My favorite moment was probably from episode 9 when Thomas had the shotgun and, just me being a Western fan and those speeches before you shoot the bad guy in the westerns, was on his horse and said, “You’re not a deputy, you’re not a judge, and you’re not a jury.” He gave his little speech and then he pulled the trigger. That was classic Western filmmaking to me. I see that and I think of Clint Eastwood, I think of all those old westerns.

We know there will be more episodes of 1883, but do you know if we’ll see Thomas again?

Monday, me and my team are going to get together and after the dust settles from the finale, we’re going to see what Paramount is saying and what’s going to happen. I’m not too sure. I haven’t heard anything. Everything was just focused on leading up to this finale. I’d love to be a part of it.