ABC/Colleen HayesAll good thing must come to an end—even Revenge.
After four years, Emily Thorne's (Emily VanCamp) mission finally comes to an explosive end in the ABC soap's series finale, "Two Graves," airing tonight. In just a few short hours, we'll know who makes it out of the Hamptons alive, and which two characters will fill the episode title's two graves. Sob!
Ahead of tonight's series finale, showrunner Sunil Nayar reflects on his time on Revenge, from the storyline he's most proud of to the character he most wishes he would've kept around longer. And his answers might surprise you!
Is there any storyline he wishes the show would've handled differently? "There's certainly stories that we wish we had more time," Nayar admits, before pin-pointing specific characters from season four that he thinks they should've kept around longer.
"I wish we had more time with Gina Torres on the show, who played Natalie. We sort of structured that arc to be a three-episode arc. So some of those characters that burned very bright but too quickly, the Malcolm Black [Tommy Flanagan] character, there are certain ones we had great three-episode arcs for that would've been fun to keep them around, but at the end of the day, I think we told the right stories at the right pace."
Which twist is he most surprised that the show actually pulled off? While the series has had a lot of crazy moments over its four-year run, Nayar admits he's "so proud" of the final three episodes of season three, that culminated with the death of Conrad (Henry Czerny) and David's (James Tupper) surprise return from the dead. "I think it was one where the audience really wasn't sure was happening, didn't see the whole plan, and then those performance that everybody gave in those moments and everything that happened in the finale last year, there were moments that felt so great when we were in the room, they felt so amazing on the page, and then you think, ‘Gosh, I really hope they convey when we put them up on the screen and I think they did even better than we had hoped.'"
Is the ending he decided on the conclusion he always envisioned or has it evolved over the course of the series? "Both," Nayar says, explaining, "All the writers and producers on the show, it's one of the things we talked about all the time, of where does this story end and how does this story end properly? What we're airing is a version of something we had talked about a lot, but as the season came into greater focus—this came into a finer resolution probably a few months ago, but once we saw what this finale was, we all knew it was the right way to go."
How does he think fans will react after it's all said and done? Nayar is confident that longtime fans are "really going to love it. There's just so much we put into it. I think the fans are going to feel insanely satisfied, really moved, and in a lot of ways, really surprised."
Because the show was always on the bubble but was not officially canceled when they were breaking the finale, did they structure the episode with it possibly being the series finale in the back of their minds? Renewal or not, Nayar says the writers broke the episode "with the idea that this is the last chapter to this story."
"Even if the show went on, we thought it's not going to go on with what the dynamic has been for the last four years," he continues. "We had high hopes especially because we love the crew of the show and wanted to keep working with them…but when I heard the news the network had decided—in tandem with what our creative hopes were—that the show had reached its logical conclusion, there's nothing in the world we would have changed with the series finale having gotten the news confirmed to us."
And fans shouldn't expect a crazy cliffhanger in the final moments, as Nayar says, "It wasn't about leaving doors open that continued this very story that people have been waiting to have a conclusion to."
Revenge's series finale airs tonight at 10 p.m. on ABC.