‘La Brea’ Boss Answers Series Finale Burning Questions About That Reunion & What Was Cut

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the La Brea series finale “The Road Home Part 2.”]

After a rollercoaster three seasons, La Brea ends on a happy note.

The Harris family—Gavin (Eoin Macken), Eve (Natalie Zea), Josh (Jack Martin), and Izzy (Zyra Gorecki)—is reunited in 2021. Sam (Jon Seda) finds his daughter Riley (Veronica St. Clair) in 1965, performs a quick operation for her dinosaur bite, then gets her to 2021, and she’ll be fine. Veronica (Lily Santiago) and Lucas (Josh McKenzie), also back in 2021, look ahead to their life as a family with their baby. Scott (Rohan Mirchandaney) tracks down the one who got away. And Ty (Chiké Okonkwo) is the only one to stay in another time, 10,000 BC, with his wife Paara (Tonantzin Carmelo).

Below, creator David Appelbaum answers our burning questions.

Why was ending this relatively happy for everyone important to you?

David Appelbaum: I think the show at the end of the day is an optimistic show. That’s the way I conceived it. I wanted it to be a family friendly show that gives people hope, that is an escape. Certainly that’s not everything within what the show is. There is sadness, and there is death and loss. But I think the view of the show is that there’s hope in the world and that’s what I wanted to give to the audience at the end for each of these characters and show in those final moments, just a little sense of that big journey that they’ve been on and the growth that they’ve all had. Embedded in the DNA of the show is that optimism, and I think those final scenes reflect that.

NBC

Was the plan always to bring the Harris family and specifically Gavin and Eve back together? 

That was always the plan. From the very beginning of conceiving the show, I knew I wanted to end with the family reunited in 2021. The show starts with the family divided— emotionally because Gavin and Eve are separated and then physically because of the sinkhole. And I always knew I wanted the meta journey of the show to be bringing them back together. Many things change along the way, but that was one thing that I knew I had to hold onto for the finale.

How much did that play into having Levi (Nicholas Gonzalez) die before the finale? Why didn’t he fit into the story you wanted to tell in the finale and the way you want to end the series?

Also baked into the DNA of the show is that not everyone lives, and there’s the pleasure and excitement for the audience of not knowing who’s going to make it out. In Season 1, you see Marybeth [Karina Logue] die; in Season 2, several other characters pass away. And so there’s this game of, well, who’s going to make it out?

But I think for Levi specifically, this is the end of a great redemption story for him. It starts in Season 1 when we meet him and learn that he has had an affair with Eve, so he’s damaged Gavin and the family in a great way. Then in Season 2, he destroys their only hope of getting home. So he’s someone who knows he needs to redeem himself. Everything he’s doing in Season 3 is to make amends and to bring this family back together, and he makes the ultimate sacrifice. I think that’s what makes that moment so emotional with his death, is feeling everything that he went through and how far away they were, but then coming back to this bond that Gavin and Levi have at the end and realizing that despite everything, they’re still brothers.

Did you ever consider having Paara join Ty in 2021?

No, not really. I think there was something satisfying in not having everyone go back home to 2021, and Ty specifically starts the show in a place where he’s so lost and is on the verge of committing suicide when we meet him and he finds his purpose and his purpose is with this woman. So leaving this place and leaving her life just never felt right to us. And we knew from a certain point in the show that being here was his endgame. His destiny is living in 10,000 BC.

NBC

Did everyone just accept that all these people who fell into the sinkhole just returned? It feels like there could have been drama there, but because of the short season, was that just not possible to do?

There’s certainly that story to tell, but we wanted to focus the end of the show on their emotional wrap-ups and showing the journey that they’ve been on and giving the audience that satisfaction. There is a lot that would happen to them having come through from 10,000 BC and the story they have to tell. But I think that’s for Episode 7.

When did Eve have time to go visit the tree in 1965? Wasn’t she in the detention center the entire time?

Not the whole time. When she first got through there, she had a moment when she was able to go up to the tree, but then she was captured. I think there’s a window in the beginning in our minds, but we don’t get too deep into that idea. But it’s something we definitely thought about as well.

Did you consider having anyone else choose to stay in 10,000 BC or 1965?

Not really 1965, but we did think about keeping Lucas and Veronica in 10,000 BC because these are two characters who have found the best versions of themselves down here. They start as polar opposites of what they are now. Lucas, when we meet him, is a drug dealer, Veronica is someone who’s been complicit in a kidnapping. They’re not necessarily good people, but they change and they find each other and they make a family, and all that happened here. So there is this debate for them, should we go back? We wanted to play that tension of what was best for them, but ultimately, they choose the welfare of their unborn child and making the determination to go back home because healthcare is a lot better in 2021 than 10,000 BC.

I think Lucas’ character development was the best of the series. 

Josh McKenzie is a fantastic actor who really throws himself into the role and embraces the journey and really thinks a lot about the character and every moment and every line and how he’s going to do it. So I think it’s a great credit to him, but also it’s a credit to the story that the writers and I created where he does go on a massive journey bigger than anyone else. It’s a huge change, and it happens over a long period of time. Because it’s not a quick journey, I think it’s a satisfying one. I think in the finale you have a chance to reflect on everything that he’s done and become.

Is there anyone you almost killed off and then decided not to?

Going back to the pilot, at the end of my pitch to NBC, Sam died by the sabertooth tiger, and they asked me not to do that because they liked the character and wanted to see where he would go. That really changed everything for that character and really for the story. That’s the one that stands out the most.

Related

'La Brea' Star Says [Spoiler] Had to Die ‘Because I Was Playing the Character'

What majorly changed from your original plan for how the series would end once you had to wrap it up with these six episodes?

In Season 3 as we were conceiving it, we had a much longer and more detailed storyline that would’ve happened in 2021, where we would’ve met more of our characters and tell a variety of stories in 2021, which would’ve been interesting because you get to see the contrast for who they were in 2021 versus 10,000 BC. We had a lot of more plans for what would happen in 10,000 BC—other worlds we would’ve explored, other things that are down there that we never got a chance to show.

But that’s just the nature of television. We were told at the beginning of the season it’s going to be six episodes and to wrap it up. That changed everything, and we wrote towards that. But at the same time, we’re still very grateful that we knew we could write towards a finale because a lot of shows never have that opportunity. Sometimes shows just end and the audience is like, “Wait, that doesn’t feel right. I just spent weeks of my life watching this.” I think our audience won’t feel like that because we’ve given them something emotionally satisfying.

Would you have gone to the future at any point?

We had ideas to do that. That was one of the stories we wanted to do in Season 3 as well. We wanted to visit the time when James [Jonno Roberts] was from and meet Gavin’s family in that time period.

Was anything cut from the finale?

Yeah, there were scenes that were cut, which happens in every episode. We can only do 42 minutes of runtime per episode because we’re on network television and usually the cuts will come in five or six minutes over that. But ultimately you see what you really need once you get in the edit.

Could those scenes be released?

They’re not so important. If I had the opportunity to make the cut as long as I wanted to, it would probably be a few minutes longer and might include a few of those scenes. But it’s not something that I think dramatically changes what the show is.