‘Found’ Finale: Shanola Hampton Breaks Down Gabi’s Confession, That Face-off With Lena & More

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the Found series finale “Missing While Dying.”]

What now?! Unfortunately, we won’t get to see what would have happened next after a major cliffhanger to cap off Found‘s two-season run. The series was canceled the day after the penultimate episode of Season 2 aired.

So now, in what ends up being the series finale (unless it can be saved), Gabi (Shanola Hampton) and Margaret (Kelli Williams) work together to save the latter’s son Jamie (Parker Queenan) from Sir’s (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) sister Lena (Danielle Savre). They’re successful, and Gabi even gives Lena a chance to escape, but the other woman chases after her, right to where the police are waiting to arrest her. The series then ends with Trent (Brett Dalton) called to Sir’s cell, where Gabi’s kidnapper is seemingly laying there, bleeding, just as Gabi, during a press conference, shocks everyone.

“A smart and courageous young man reminded me yesterday that secrets and lies keep us chained to the past. So here’s the truth. A year ago, I abducted Hugh Evans and held him prisoner in my basement for nine months. I, Gabi — I, Gabrielle Mosley, am a kidnapper,” she announces.

Below, Shanola Hampton breaks down the finale, shares what she had hoped to see in a Season 3, and more. Plus, read a deep dive into the finale with showrunner Nkechi Okoro Carroll here. (Note: This interview was conducted prior to Found‘s cancellation.)

What an end to the season!

Shanola Hampton: I was not expecting for her to confess. And I mean this, where could we go from here?

That’s what I was wondering about. When did you find out about the season ending with that?

I found out about it when I got the script, which note, I don’t read the scripts until I am done shooting the episode that I’m on because it’s too much information. So I found out basically a day before we started shooting the episode, and I was like, wait, what? She’s telling the world? Please Lord, let it be a dream sequence. Sir’s on the floor bleeding out. Where do we go? Especially for a sophomore show, I think it is one of the best finales and it really does leave you wanting more and people say that, but this really does that.

Talk about filming that because also it’s Gabi using her full name as well, which she hasn’t used because of Sir.

She’s taking the power back finally. And I mean if you look at the season, Gabi spent so much time taking care of everyone else, but you see her taking steps to start healing herself, to get the therapy, to go with Ethan [Lee Osorio]. And so by the time you get to the finale, that pivotal moment when she was kidnapping, she shares her story not only to the guy that kidnapped her, but also to the audience, she was explaining to them how she became Gabi Mosley and not Gabrielle. So to see her go through her healing and then take ownership again at the end, it’s such a telling moment to say, now I’m grabbing this power back, and that’s what it is with Sir and Gabi, right? It’s a game of cat and mouse. One is up, one is down, one is up, and you finally see her saying, no, no, no, no, no, I need to take ownership of me again. And I think that’s so beautiful.

How was filming that last scene of the finale?

It was intense. It’s always nice to be able to have something that you work towards as an actor because you’re playing all those scenes throughout the season, but also for the character to have sort of that reward and that payoff. You get the payoff right there. It’s a payoff but also leaves it as a cliffhanger, so it is so fun and exciting to play.

As Gabi’s doing this, Sir is possibly dying on the floor in his cell. What can you say about his fate?

I have no idea. And that is the scariest part because he can’t die because I’m not doing this show without Mark-Paul. [Laughs] because that’s my ride or die. But anytime you have a finale that does those kind of final moments, it really just leaves you saying, what the heck are we going to do next? It just does.

Should he die, how would Gabi feel? I feel like it would be a mix of complicated emotions for her.

He’s so embedded in her, he’s such a part of her psyche, her bloodstream. I think that there are definite moments where she thinks that’s all she really wants. It’s people who have complicated relationships with their parents. They haven’t spoken to them for a really, really long time, and then dad dies, or mom, and then it’s like, wait, this is not the emotion that I expected to feel, but you feel it because they’re a part — in many ways, Sir has been that parental for her. Their sick dynamic plays to her strengths. It plays to what makes her alive in many ways. You got to see this season, in Season 2, the panic attacks stop when he gave her a purpose. It was him that did that. So I don’t think that there would be this feeling of [relief]. It would be very complicated as it was when he was living.

And I feel like if he were to die, that’s when she would then start seeing him again. You would get those moments because she would be so used to having him to talk to. Even if she didn’t want to go to see him, she still went to see him when she felt she needed to.

Absolutely. He would become some sort of her invisible friend, much like you saw when she wasn’t, when he was alive and yeah, that’s exactly right.

Would Gabi regret telling the press about kidnapping Sir if he dies? I’m feeling like no, right? Because that’s about what she needed to forgive herself?

Absolutely not. Gabi’s penance has been the through line for this season, and I think that was important for the audience to see as well, because the first season you’re like, well, she’s just as bad, and she is in many ways, hasn’t made the right choices. But, you see, the difference between the two is Sir doesn’t think he’s doing anything wrong, where all she wants to do is pay for her mistakes. And so the coming out to the press is less — because he didn’t allow that earlier on when he said, no, she didn’t do it. He didn’t allow this penance. He keeps it over her head. If she can free herself from this big secret to the world, then it gives her the relief and the power and then give it to me. She wants it. She wants the punishment, she wants the ridicule, she wants all of that because she feels like she deserves it. So no, whether he lives or dies, she would want that moment.

What is Gabi expecting the consequences to be of her confession? Has she fully thought that out at this point?

No, no, no, no. The one thing I think that we’ve all learned about Gabi Mosley at this point is that she acts on emotion and not a lot of thought. That’s how we even end up where we are. She is very emotional. It’s why she makes questionable decisions when she’s looking for a missing person. She just goes and she does it, and Trent is the moral compass there. It’s why Sir ended up in the basement because her father had died and it was just emotion and it is a rage. It is something that she can’t control. So thinking about the next step after or the consequences is not something that comes naturally to her or something that she really does in general. So no, she’s thought about this moment right here, I’m doing it now.

But it also feels like she could potentially lose that ability to help search for missing people and then that could affect her because I don’t think she’s thought about who she will be without that.

Her whole life is that. It’s two things. Her whole life is searching for missing people and the cat and mouse game between Sir. That’s her life. I don’t know what she does without either of those things. I don’t know who she is without — you get rid of a toxic relationship and then you realize, OK, well who am I now? And then there’s a search there, but then generally speaking, if you get rid of one addiction, you pick another one up, what would that be? So it’s so interesting. I don’t know how she survives without either.

Would Gabi really have let Lena just disappear should she have chosen to go out the back door and just run?

Absolutely not. Gabi feels for Lena because she understands the mind of it, but Gabi also understands that there is no real healing after that kind of conditioning has been done. So if it was just her, maybe she would take the risk. Because she has so many other people to protect and now she is coming off from taking Jamie, all of these things, there’s no way that she can allow this person to be free on the streets.

Talk about filming that scene with Danielle in the school. It was so good.

Isn’t it so good? It’s good, right? It’s one of my favorite scenes, and it was so intense. People who are not an actor, it’s hard to understand what it feels like when you are working with another professional who is completely grounded in their character and is going to give and get and give and get. And Danielle does that in this scene so beautifully. It was so much fun to play with her. It was so intense. It didn’t take us a lot to get there. We just did it and it was so much fun to do it. And it’s also super fun, I think, for audiences to see two badass women just kind of go [head-to-head] and not one greater than the other. It’s so good. It was so fun to play.

Especially these are two of Sir’s victims facing off…

Two of Sir’s victims facing off. You have the level of empathy, you have the level of being careful, cautious. You have the level of resentment, both. It’s so many layers in that one little scene and all, both products of this man.

Including, because we saw you as Gabi take that moment in the hall, being back in that school. We know what it means for her.

And the first time to be going back there where it all happened, it’s a lot. Even that set is a part of the storytelling, which adds that another layer. It’s so layered.

How are you feeling about the potential of a third season? We need it after that.

The business is so hard. Here’s how I feel. If we were back to what it looks like when shows get picked up, I think we’ve done what we needed to do. I think we have satisfied the audience. I think we’ve given suspense. I think, NBC, to fit the model that they do so well, the procedural and what I like to call a heightened procedural, I think we’ve given them the material, we’ve given them the goods. I think we’ve given the fans a taste of all this journey. They got a sense of what the show is from [Season] 1 to 2, where we go. In that sense, I feel like, hell yeah, we’re going to get a Season 3. The audience deserves a Season 3. These characters deserve to live out in a Season 3. So in that way, I think that we definitely get a Season 3 and I think we earned it.

What do you know about what we could see in a third season?

I know this. We got to see Margaret’s backstory, which was fantastic. The idea is we are an ensemble. The next thing you’re going to get to get into is Dhan. Doesn’t everybody want to know? Dhan is Gabi’s ride or die. You see this unyielding loyalty to her. Why? Let’s get there. And then you have Karan [Oberoi], who is just a phenomenal actor, to be able to go through that journey with him, heck yeah we need a Season 3, so we can do that.

We’ve heard about bits and pieces of his past.

Let’s get into it. Just like we, in Season 1, saw bits and pieces of Margaret, but what really happened with Jamie, we got to satisfy that in Season 2.

Thank God that was really Jamie, because I mean, if not…

That’s what I said. I was like, I can’t deal with anymore heartbreak, and I know this show loves to break our hearts.

What are your hopes for Gabi in a third season?

I hope she continues to heal. I hope that she continues to fight for her sanity but really show the support for others, but support herself in that same way. That’s what I really hope that she’ll do. And it’s going to get crazy because if Sir gets up off of that ground from bleeding out, there’s no stopping him from wanting that connection with Gabi and spending that life. So it’s going to be hard.

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