‘Surface’ Cast Reacts to Finale Wedding & Eliza’s Major Decision

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the Surface Season 2 finale “Unearthed.”]

Yes, the Surface Season 2 finale ends on a bombshell for Sophie (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), who learns that she’s forgotten a part of her past that resulted in warrants out for her arrest (as Tess Caldwell). But there were a few shocking moments leading up to that one as well.

First, Sophie does get answers regarding her mother’s death: She was murdered, by Olivia (Joely Richardson), the wife of her biological father, Henry (Rupert Graves). She’d stopped by the estate when Sophie was a kid, and Olivia had shot her in her panic. When Eliza (Millie Brady) realizes that her body is buried on the property and is therefore the proof she needs, she alerts Sophie, her sister.

“From the beginning, there’s this real push and pull with Eliza that she wants to distance herself from her family,” Brady tells TV Insider. “I think all of them do grapple with flickers of the weight of the dark, family history being really heavy. But I think Eliza, it shows more and weighs heavier. And I think that she wants out of it more than the other characters. I think the other characters are deep in and don’t know how to get out. From that being present from the get-go, that push and pull, I think that that moment in her life is a real crossroads between, ‘I can either carry on how this family has gone from generation to generation, or I can be the person that tries to break this generational pattern.’ And I think that she does it for herself as much as she’s doing it for Sophie. It’s a huge release, but also it’s really painful. She’s throwing her family under the bus.”

Mbatha-Raw sees it as “courageous” and says it did surprise Sophie. “By that point, they’re on different paths in their journey. And the fact that Eliza does that is a real validation for Sophie,” she explains, turning to Brady and adding, “But like you say, I guess it’s as much for herself and I think they’re both trying to get to the truth of their own legacy, their own personal family legacies. And that’s both a sort of selfish quest for both of them, but also they’re sort of interwoven with each other.”

Related

'Surface' Bosses Tease Potential Season 3 After Shocking Finale

Speaking of the Huntleys, the finale features Quinn’s (Phil Dunster) wedding, after his fiancée Grace (Freida Pinto) does question what it means to join the family with more and more coming out about what they’ve done. But after he tells her that Sophie, who had befriended her, has been speaking to a journalist (Gavin Drea‘s Callum) and James (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), who had lied his way into their lives, is her husband, she decides to go through with it.

Before that, however, Pinto confirms that Grace was “very, very close” to not. “I hope it comes across as that as well, because it is a very bitter pill to swallow that this family that she’s marrying into is capable of something so dark. So for her to know that she says yes and walks down that aisle and marries this man, she’s part of the darkness at that moment…  There is just the saving grace of the vulnerability of this man, which, he plays his cards pretty well, too,” she notes. “That allows her to give herself the permission to walk into the darkness knowing that this is her decision and she’s going to stand by it and make it. Marrying into this family and marrying for love, but also marrying for ambition is okay.”

On Quinn’s part, he goes through with it because he loves Grace. “He sees Grace as his salvation away from who he might’ve been or maybe who he is becoming,” explains Dunster. “And I think there’s this weird nebulous sort of sludge that the two of them are stepping into, which was not what either of them had planned. And so I think he sort clings onto her for all his worth really.”

For both of them, the wedding itself was “their escape,” says Pinto. “They want to feel this joy and they know what they have said yes to and walked into. He knows what he’s brought her into, but they have to find the joy in that relationship. For Grace at that wedding reception, being that close to the Huntleys, her friends are at this wedding, she wants to feel and does feel in that moment, the joy of being part of this relationship and being part of this family now.”

Quinn, however, can’t really “fully escape” it, according to Dunster. “It’s always there for him. He might try to even deny it to himself, but I think that he knows that. And even when right at the end, when he has that conversation with Eliza where she’s like, ‘We can’t escape it, it’s always here,’ you can see him trying to lie to himself about it. And we see his dad take William Huntley off and kill him. It’s a never-ending cycle that he knows that he’s a part of.”

Surface, Streaming now, Apple TV+

From TV Guide Magazine

Behind the Scenes With Gordon Ramsay: 20 Years of Cooking Up TV Hits

The celebrity chef reflects on redefining culinary television and his fiery journey Hell’s Kitchen to Secret Service. Read the story now on TV Insider.