‘Found’ Boss Promises Immediate Answer to Gabi’s Phone Call & Reveals Its Implications
Spoiler Alert
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Found Season 1 Episode 11 “Missing While Interracial.”]
The good news: We don’t have to wait too long to get answers about that phone call that ended the last Found episode of 2023. The drama returns with the final two episodes of its first season — it’s already been renewed — on January 9.
In “Missing While Interracial,” Trent (Brett Dalton) informs Gabi (Shanola Hampton) that Annie, whom she thought Sir (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) killed and that’s why she didn’t return to help her, died two years ago. Gabi slips and asks, “So you’re saying Sir is telling me the truth?” before ending their call. Then, she goes downstairs and tells Sir she should’ve buried him the day she found him and makes a call: “It’s me. I need you to come over. It’s about Sir.”
Who’s on the other end? TV Insider tried to get answers from executive producer Nkechi Okoro Carroll about that and more.
Gabi tries to cover her slip to Trent about Sir, but that’s really a moment that she’s lost control of herself, right? Because this was something she had thought true for so long and as she then tells Sir, she was holding onto the chance to avenge Annie.
Nkechi Okoro Carroll: One hundred percent. It is something that’s part of how she’s justified what she’s been doing all this time. It wasn’t just about helping solve the current cases. It wasn’t just about the mental break she had around the time that her father died and wanting to make Sir pay for the amount of time he took away from her in her youth from her dad. It was also about saving Annie, finding out what happened to Annie and this young woman who tried to help her, and it was about avenging her. So learning that potentially Sir wasn’t lying and that he hadn’t killed Annie and that she’d actually died later on in life, it turns her whole mind upside down, A, on what she’s been right and wrong about in regards to Sir, and B, did she just do all of this in her sort of temporary insanity for essentially no reason? Those are the things that she’s sort of grappling with. It really does turn her world upside down.
And by the time we’ve gotten to Episode 11, she’s already questioning so many things about how she’s handled the Sir situation. It’s one of those things where we always talk about how when someone you love so much that you’re so connected to passes away and sometimes that’s just enough of a landmine to trigger a break if there’s trauma there that hasn’t really properly healed or been dealt with. That’s what happened in Gabi’s case because she kidnapped Sir shortly after her father passed. And so for her, each case this season and as she saves someone, as she gets closer and more open with her colleagues at M&A, all of that has been healing her.
Steve Swisher/NBC
So as she heals with each episode, as a piece of her gets better with each episode, the reality of the man in her basement and what she’s done has been gnawing at her because as she’s getting healthier and better, she fully understands what she did was absolutely cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. And what is your way out of this if it’s not turning yourself in? Yes, he goes to jail, but so do you. [She’s facing] the spiral of realizing that what she did in a moment of mental instability and what she did in a moment of heartbreak has far-reaching consequences for so many more people than just her. That was already the case before she found out about Annie from Trent, and you see it in that moment when she slips up. She is not on her game. Her whole world is crumbling underneath her, and that is a feeling that Gabi does not do well with.
What’s Trent thinking? Because the exact reason that Gabi wanted him to take his badge back might now be what leads to him discovering everything she was hiding.
It definitely has him concerned. Sure, people slip up, right? People say stuff in present tense, past tense. But he’s a cop, and he’s a cop with great investigative skills. Gabi isn’t someone who slips up. She’s not one of those people that says something in the present when she means the past. So there’s a piece of him that’s like, “Okay, she got shocking news, she was stunned in the moment, she made a mistake.” But every fiber of his cop instinct is also like, “There’s something there.” Now, he’s definitely not thinking, “Oh, she has Sir in her basement,” but he’s definitely [wondering], does she have one of those investigative murder boards where she hasn’t stopped tracking him? Clearly she has not put what happened behind her. And so for Trent, it’s just an instinctual bubbling of, “That slip-up may be more than a slip-up, but what is it? I don’t know.”
What does that mean for what we see from the two of them going forward?
Trent’s gut is definitely on fire, but this is a man who’s also very much in love with Gabi and knows she’s a flawed woman. And so for him, it’s juggling. He believes in her mission, he believes in her, and he’s head over heels in love with her. Those are very powerful emotions to combat what his gut is also saying: There’s something here. We need to look into this. What’s going on? And so we’re going to see him wrestle with that. But at his heart, he stands by Gabi. Everyone is flawed, everyone makes mistakes, and he believes in her and what she’s doing, but his gut is telling him she’s not letting him in on something that she may need help with.
The episode ends with Gabi making that call to someone saying to come over and “it’s about Sir.” What can you say about who she called, and what’s next there?
Absolutely nothing. But what I can say is we will find out very quickly who it is that she called. That person is coming. It’s not something that the audience will have to wait ’til the finale to find out. Immediately, you’re going to know who she called, and then you’re going to realize the implications of that beyond just that she reached out to them in this moment, but that, oh, has she been keeping this secret alone? How much did they know? But there’s definitely someone else involved in this.
Steve Swisher/NBC
And it’s one of the team?
I have no comment.
Someone we’ve seen?
Yes, it is someone you’ve seen.
Lacey (Gabrielle Walsh) was going to take some time away for herself, and then she and Gabi had that conversation about the truth, and Gabi lied about what’s in the basement. I mean, there’s a little truth in what’s in the basement —
I was about to say she didn’t lie. She was careful about how — what she said was accurate, but you know darn well, that’s not what Lacey meant. So she didn’t lie to her.
But Lacey might see it as a lie if she finds out what’s really in the basement. So she decides to stay, but it feels like she’s just putting off something she needs for herself, that time away?
Lacey probably could use some time away. I don’t think she actually really sees it that way. Her wanting to leave and take some time was in reaction to feeling like that bond that has existed between her and Gabi her whole life was feeling different and broken and essentially in the now nine months since Gabi’s father passed away, Gabi has not been the same person. Piece by piece, Lacey is realizing that, and at first, you think it’s just grief, but now, it’s like something major is going on. She and Gabi have shared everything. Gabi was her savior. She’s the woman she looks up to, who she aspires to be. As she’s starting to see more and more of Gabi’s flaws, starting to see what feels like dishonesty to her, starting to feel those cracks, like that’s not the woman she idolizes, that was what was really driving her away.
So if she feels like, oh, okay, Gabi’s just struggling, and she’s being honest — if Lacey had her way, she would never leave Gabi’s side. That is the safest place because of what happened to her as a child. To her, Gabi is safety. She’s been struggling with this so much because if her one safe place is starting not to feel safe because she’s feeling inconsistencies and lies and everything, that was very triggering for her. And so for now, she doesn’t really want to leave. She wants to stay by Gabi’s side, but she wants old Gabi. She doesn’t want whatever this new iteration of Gabi she’s been dealing with for the nine months is. I’m sure any therapist in the world would tell Lacey, some time apart on your own, dealing with your own stuff is the best thing for you, but it is never the thing that Lacey would voluntarily choose.
Have you found a way to have teen and adult Gabi in a scene together this season?
I haven’t, and it is a dream because A’Zaria Carter, who plays Teen Gabi, and Shanola Hampton are just two unbelievable powerful forces, and I would love nothing more than to see them have to battle a scene out together. They are just two actresses that are at the top of their game, but we won’t see that this season.
I feel like if you just have them sitting in the living room and just talking to each other, that could be such a powerful scene. Or even in the basement, that would be a wild scene.
[Laughs] There’s some wild scenes coming up in that basement.
Found, Returns, Tuesday, January 9, 2024, 10/9c, NBC
