Exclusive Interview

‘Crew Girl’ Boss Breaks Down Season 1’s Love Triangle Cliffhanger & What’s Next

Crew Girl‘s Season 1 love triangle always keeps you guessing, and that was by design. Once Teagan joins her private school’s all-boys rowing team, she (Miku Martineau) grows closer to ambitious underdog Cam (Kyle Clark). When their connection is disrupted, Teagan’s tension with the team’s arrogant captain, Josh (Samuel Braun), turns romantic. (Warning: Spoilers for Crew Girl Season 1 ahead!)

Season 1 of the Netflix series ends with Josh realizing he has more growing to do before he’s ready to pursue Teagan. Moments later, Cam — who led the team to victory for the first time in the stroke seat — and Teagan kiss. Earlier in the season, Cam ends things with Teagan before they can really begin. According to creator and showrunner Vivian Lin, that finale kiss almost didn’t happen. The showrunner breaks down that cliffhanger ending, all the love triangle twists and turns, and more with Swooon below.

Swooon: Why did you decide to end Teagan and Josh’s enemies dynamic midway through the season?

Vivian Lin: It was a little bit like, how can we keep everyone on their toes? Where will we make things similar, and where will we make things really unexpected or different? And so, it felt like a really organic place to start them, stop them, and then go into our next phase. That was to get people guessing where we would go.

Swooon: Teagan gets with Josh almost immediately after Cam shuts things down with her at the formal. What’s Teagan’s mindset there?

Lin: Yeah, everything about Teagan and Josh is just instinctual. It’s never thought out. It’s just a feeling and a moment and an opportunity. There’s definitely more to them, but Josh speaks to her very instinctual side, as she does to him, whereas with Cam, it’s a little bit more… [He] speaks to her rower side and who she wants to be, and they have a common place in life. So that was the thinking behind the big sudden shift. Going into that scene, I don’t think they were both intending to end up the way they were.

Swooon: During Teagan and Josh’s secret fling from there on out, is part of her heart still with Cam? 

Lin: I think so. I don’t want to diminish that she has real feelings for Josh and that it’s something real, but I also think she’s heartbroken. You can hold two things at once, so I think she’s still really wounded from that. And maybe part of it is distraction, part of it is exploratory. It is definitely not a full or healthy place to be, and that’s where I think, until it becomes something with someone or not, there is no happy ending yet.

Swooon: In the finale, Teagan kisses Cam pretty fast after that conversation with Josh, who asks Teagan to give him a second chance eventually. On the flip side, is Josh still in the back of her mind when she’s kissing Cam? 

Lin: In that moment with Josh, he was sort of like, “I messed this relationship up because of my stuff, and so I’m not ready,” and I think Teagan, also having grown, is like, “Well, you can’t come back to me until you’re ready.” It’s a little bit like she’s got a standard now, that he has to win back her respect. He broke her heart. I think in that moment, it’s a little bit like putting Josh on ice, where he’s got to earn it.

Craig Minielly/Netflix

Swooon: When Cam and Teagan kiss in the finale, does he still have those insecurities that made him break up with Teagan in the first place?

Lin: What gave him the courage to kiss Teagan was that he was able to take the mantle for the first time and felt good about himself. And so, there was a new evolution to him where, yes, he had those insecurities, but he found his first step into it. But, you know, with great power comes great responsibility, and so I think there is always an insecurity that he can discover or that can rear its ugly head.

Swooon: Do you want viewers to still be torn between Josh and Cam by the end? 

Lin: I do. I go back and forth. People can have their favorites, but I like that for a love triangle, because you always want to know who will eventually be the best choice for her.

Swooon: She still has a lot to go through. She could have a lot of individual growth, and then someone ends up being the better pick just based on where she’s at.

Lin: That’s exactly it. Yeah, she’s got a lot of growing to do herself. She has a lot of figuring out and earning herself to do.

Swooon: Definitely. Do you have a multi-season plan, or are you focusing on one season at a time?

Lin: It’s funny. Whenever you write a season of a show, you kind of need to know what the finale is going to be, and then in order to do a finale, you need to know what the next season’s first episode is going to be, too, so we had some theories. In the writers’ room, you’re always just gossiping about the characters, so you’re always theorizing and gossiping about them, and then eventually things become “real life” for the characters. So, we have a lot of gossip about them.

Swooon: Do you know the endgame that you want for Teagan already? 

Lin: I think all the characters are not at a point where they can make decisions, like endgame decisions. So I feel like there are things to uncover before… It’s like real life. You don’t always know who endgame is when you meet them, or they are endgame for a moment, and then someone else pops up, thus upending the word endgame.

Swooon: Would you want to keep the love triangle going until the potential end, or would you want to fully explore Teagan being committed to a choice?

Lin: It’s funny. I’m always a little bit like, whenever there’s something a little too predictable, you kind of want to shake it up a little bit. So it’s kind of a little bit of a toss-up at this point, a little bit.

Swooon: And who’s to say another love interest can’t come into the picture?

Lin: I mean, there are eight boys on that rowing team. [Lin later said that there was a Team Ryder camp in the writers’ room.]

Swooon: For Josh to come back into the picture, in what ways does he still need to grow? And how does Teagan still need to grow for a romance to be in the realm of possibility for them?

Lin: For Josh, he definitely needs to grow. He has hidden himself away for so long, and he’s on new footing. His family has been upended, his rowing has been upended. He has no idea where he is, and he’s hurt a lot of people along the way to keep a secret. So he’s got a lot of rebuilding to do and a little bit of some redemption. As for Teagan, she hasn’t experienced enough yet of her life. She’s just settled in after being upended. She’s not in her form. Like, if her form is a rower, she’s not rowing, so that is going to cause a little bit of turmoil. So I think no one’s in a place where they can have good romantic decisions. I love that. Like, “Nope, I’m gonna make messed up decisions always.” Messy, messy people.

Craig Minielly/Netflix

Swooon: That’s what makes a good teen drama. Are there any new things you want to explore or goals you want to achieve in a potential second season or throughlines you want to continue? 

Lin: I don’t think I can say anything that isn’t a spoiler… I think again, it’s gossip. I don’t want to promise anyone anything. There’s gossip, nothing concrete.

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Swooon: From the start of developing the project to the end, were there any directions the story took that you weren’t expecting? Or the biggest changes from start to finish?

Lin: The biggest one is… Jennica Harper, one of the writers, she was a very big Cam stan in the room. And then at the end, we had broken all of the episodes, and she was like, “So, she’s just not gonna kiss him?” And I was like, “Oh, you’re right, you’re right.” And so that’s where that last piece came from. She was absolutely right. So the Cam fans can thank her. We were going to leave them wanting.

Swooon: There’s also the Finding Her Edge connection with your shared EP, Jeff Norton. Would you ever consider doing a crossover?

Lin: I’d have to think about that one. It’s ice dancing and rowing. But what’s funny is Ollie Atkins… His whole family is on the show [Crew Girl], so his cousin is Alana. His mother is our production manager, who’s the best. Oh, and his sister was like AD-ing for us, so I could see a world. I could see a world. He would come visit the set, too.

Crew Girl, Season 1, Streaming Now, Netflix