‘The Terror: Devil in Silver’ Bosses Explain Hopeful Ending

Things ended on a surprisingly hopeful note after so much carnage in The Terror: Devil in Silver‘s finale on Thursday (June 11). Warning: Spoilers for The Terror: Devil in Silver‘s finale ahead!

The episode revealed the truth about Dr. Walter’s (John Benjamin Hickey) past, that he’d been performing hundreds of lobotomies on patients and intended to take his cruel act on the road with a mobile treatment van. After Dory’s (Judith Light) friend attacked the doctor with his own device, he had no choice but to work with Walter or else he would go after Dory again. This explains why Dory had so much affinity for the man in the silver room.

As a hurricane set in on the hospital, leaving the patients without power or a path for escape, Pepper (Dan Stevens) had to make a choice: Help the devil escape the hospital or watch as everyone else died. So, he absorbed the devil into his own body and freed everyone but himself.

This brought him closer to Anthony, though, especially once Pepper admitted the truth about why he abandoned him as a helpless child. He knew he was wrong to do it and didn’t ask for his forgiveness … just Anthony’s presence in his life.

When asked if he could handle the burden of bearing the beast inside of him, Pepper answered with, “Can I handle it alone? No. But we’ve all got our demons, don’t we?” As long as Anthony remained a part of his life, Pepper believed he could keep the demon at bay.

Executive producer Chris Cantwell said of the happy-ish ending, “We wanted to show that it’s going to be a daily struggle for Pepper for the rest of his life, but if he stays connected to Anthony, if he stays honest with himself, and he’s able to let that rage rest, he has a fighting chance of winning. That’s where we wanted that to end.”

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Meanwhile, Victor LaValle, who wrote the book upon which it’s based, added, “A point Chris has made before, that I really like highlighting, was that the devil that’s in him, or whatever it is, it feeds on rage and anger, and all the rest, and so, in theory, the longer that Pepper can sort of control that and not have that feeling, the more that thing is starved and starved and starved. So, the hope would be that somewhere in the future, even that thing could be just a whisper and maybe eventually die off altogether.”

This is a metaphor, of course, for mental illness, which was intentional. “Yes, it’s something you’ve got to wake up and deal with every day,” Cantwell confirmed.

The Terror: Devil in Silver, AMC+