‘Rabbit Hole’ Bosses Answer Season 1 Finale Burning Questions

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the Rabbit Hole Season 1 finale “Ace in the Hole.”]

While the Rabbit Hole Season 1 finale did wrap up some threads, it also left us wanting more.

John (Kiefer Sutherland) has a new team and seems to have found love with Hailey (Meta Golding). He and his dad Ben (Charles Dance) are on much better terms. Crowley is dead (maybe). But there’s someone else running things, as Ben learns when he finds that in-ear comm at the end.

Executive producers, writers, and directors John Requa and Glenn Ficarra answer our burning questions and tease what could be next if the series is renewed.

Can you confirm that was Crowley and he is dead? Because Charles Dance told me not to trust the finale and then there was that in-ear comm that Ben found and someone was on the other end…

John Requa & Glenn Ficarra: That’s a tough one. Let’s put it this way: We think he’s dead, but we haven’t really seriously thought about this. We have ideas for the second season, but the third and fourth and beyond the second season, we haven’t really thought about it. So we might lie, but I would say for this that we killed him. Anything is possible.

What can you say about the ending and what we should be keeping in mind from the season that might be related to it?

I think the kind of enemy of this super rich ruling the world from the shadows is something that’s going to be always hanging over the team. And I think we’ve kind of witnessed the birth of a new team, a new kind of Weir Incorporated.

I have to admit, you got me with the reveal about John’s ex-wife. Is there more that he was up to that we have yet to see as viewers?

In this particular story, no. But almost certainly there are a couple of things that were not revealed, things from his past that are not resolved that will, going forward, be resolved.

But our goal was really to make a satisfying season finale that sort of felt complete like a movie’s closing, as opposed to a lot of TV shows just leave the whole thing wide open. We wanted audiences to go on the ride and feel satisfied and come back because they liked the show and they liked the characters and not because we left a bunch of stuff hanging.

Something I liked was how much the finale recalls what we saw John doing at the beginning of the series, controlling the narrative, and plays on what’s real and what’s not, what’s true and what’s not. But is there any way that we could see him doing anything similar to that old life going forward after what he’s been through? Or would it be more about him using those skills in new ways?

I think both. Mostly using the skills in new ways for different challenges, but I think there’s also parts of his past that we have yet to explore as well as Ben’s past, so we’re going to see the old John and the new one as well.

I have to admit that I still don’t trust Hailey, though John seems to. What did you want to do with their relationship this season to lead to their moments in the finale?

I think obviously they both have trust issues. They still have trust issues. We wanted the season to be that John suffers a loss in the first show of his only real connection to the human race, his only friend, his confidant, and because of that, he’s a bit adrift. Then over the course of the season, we wanted him to luckily stumble on and find the person that fills that role and also he falls in love with her. So that was the journey. We like to think, from our perspective, that Episode 7 is the culmination of their relationship and that he’s found someone to replace Miles Valence and that’s what allows him to so effortlessly and skillfully take down Crowley in Episode 8.

But should we and should John trust Hailey?

That’s a good question. I think her affection for John is real, but she’s a person who leaves a lot of things unsaid. I don’t think we know her whole story just yet.

Marni Grossman/Paramount+

Talk about crafting John and Ben’s arc, which was so good, and where you wanted to leave them by the finale. And it felt necessary to have and see that possibility of John killing Ben.

Yeah. There was a reason why we cast Charles Dance in this part because we wanted the audience to be a little suspicious of him and he’s also just an amazing actor. So when it came time for him to show the emotion and be completely lovable, we knew he could do that as well. These kind of shows, when they’re good, just like those ‘70s espionage thrillers that we base this show on, you don’t really trust anybody. That’s part of the fun and you have to keep a little bit of doubt alive so the audience doesn’t feel completely hoodwinked when you pull the rug out from them.

Is Ben being as honest as he can be at this point with John?

I think that’s a fair way to say.

It seems like now is the time that John is really going to be able to process Miles’ death because he knows everything that led to it. How do you see that affecting him moving forward?

I think it’s kind of a gift to him to be able to have it all figured out and be able to know that his friend by trying to save him. It might make future relationships a little easier because he felt betrayed, and I think that would be a great relief to him.

John and Madi’s (Enid Graham) dynamic was so interesting all season. What made them trust each other to the extent they had to in the finale?

We love their relationship and the fact that the one thing that John Weir knows about her is that she’s good and she’s moral and she’s ethical and he almost weaponizes that. He almost uses that against her. He knows that when she is confronted with this deep corruption, she has one move, and that’s also his skill. He can see the moves before they happen and then he knows what she has to do. And so when he calls her and he says, “You have to help me because I know you’re good and I know you can’t be on the side of the bad guy,” she’s furious about it because she honestly doesn’t like him. That’s the one thing we kept alive all season: She just doesn’t like John Weir.

So The Intern (Walt Klink) is still out there. How significant is that?

He killed John’s entire team. I think he has something coming to him. But as you can see, the Intern’s only interested in money really. So that could be a weakness for him.

Could he be working for the person that who is on at the end, or was he just tied to Crowley?

I think he was just for hire for Crowley. The question is, who was Crowley and who was Crowley talking to? Was that Crowley’s boss or was it Crowley himself? We don’t know. Also, where did he come from? These are things that will be fun in ongoing seasons. How does a young person like that become so skilled at killing and doing the things that he does? Hopefully we will be able to explore that a little bit more.

Is there anything else you can say about that person Ben was speaking to?

No. [Laughs] We have a couple ideas of what we want to do. We’ve talked about it, and we don’t want to commit to something because we don’t want to feel like we’re stuck doing one direction.

Is there anything you can say about what we could see or anything else that you would like to explore in a possible Season 2? Would you want to do another season-long arc? Mini arcs?

Yeah, we’ll do a new set of arcs and I think if we were to do another season, the thing that we’d look into is Ben and how his past is coming back to haunt him. He’s had a complex life, and people have paid the price for decisions he’s made in his past. I think we’ll continue to see, just like we did in this season, those chickens come home to roost.

What about who could return for a potential second season? Are you looking at most of the same cast coming back who are still around? Do you not know yet?

I think a great deal of them will come back. We always saw this as in the first show, John’s team dies and the season is about him getting a new team. And so we feel like now we have a team and it would be fun to see them together and making their way through the world.

Would Edward Homm (Rob Yang) be part of that team? Because it’s easy to see how his story could be tied up for now, but he also did seem to enjoy the life that John brought him into.

Yeah, and that’s one of the ones we’re going to have fun with. Because I think he did find himself and he has some resolution yet to go and what he wants to do with the rest of his life in case. Where could he do more good?

What else should viewers keep in mind about Season 1 for anything going forward?

This has been hard because we’ve been talking, but we have so many ideas. You don’t want to make promises you can’t keep. I think we spent a lot of time creating some characters that we want to really be able to relish in, so I think that’s the thing to look forward to.

Rabbit Hole, Season 1, Streaming Now, Paramount+