AP Photo / Matt SaylesWentworth Miller, Dominic Purcell and the gang of Fox's Prison Break return this Friday for their final (boo!) five episodes, and we caught up with executive producer Matt Olmstead to fill us in on how the story wraps up and what goes down in the final five eps.
Check out what Matt has to say on death, returning characters and talks of the rumored spinoff...
What can you tell us about Prison Break, the Final Break?
What it is, basically, is episode 22, which is the series finale, network finale for now. Everything gets wrapped up, and then in the last act there's a jump forward, like, four years from now. We show the characters where they are, and some have won, lost. It's bittersweet, and this two-hour that we had in mind, or the next couple of episodes that we had in mind, kind of plays in that middle period—that wrinkle in time.
How do you plan to wrap up T-Bag's story?
He has been like a real cockroach, but in what I've been referring to as this four-year jump cut ahead, when you see T-Bag, and when we screened it for the cast and crew at the wrap party, the crowd erupted. Obviously he's a big fan favorite, but it's a bit heartbreaking to see where he ends up. But it makes perfect sense.
We heard talk that there was somebody you wanted to kill in the finale, but Fox wasn't crazy about it so you had to change plans. Any truth to that?
Actually, they came around. There was kind of a polarized viewpoint over at Fox in terms of killing or preserving a character, and we made our pitch and turned in the script. They saw the merit in it, and so they were completely onboard.
I was wondering what you could tease about any returning faces we might see during these last few episodes.
The mom character, the revelation that we put in the last episode, and she plays a big part of the last few episodes. A lot of secrets are revealed, and Michael and Lincoln are certainly shaken in terms of who they are, where they came from, and at a certain point, they're wondering if this is the truth or are they trying to be divided and conquered, so to speak. Then we have a big surprise reveal, which I won't tell you who it is, but a returning character who comes in late in the game when the wheels are coming off, he's either there to save the day or to hijack the whole thing for his or her own benefit. So the big reveal of a returning character pays off very nicely.
What can you tell us about how Michael and Sara's storyline is going to be wrapped up?
It's wrapped up unexpectedly...We found a way in this season for this kind of torture, that she suffered at the hands of Gretchen and company in season three off-screen, that helped kind of put this new wall between her and Michael, and it's a wall that inhibits their intimacy, and finally at the end of the season, I can say that wall comes down, but there are unexpected ramifications to that. Ultimately it's bittersweet, but very satisfying.
And at the end of the series, is there a small door left open for any follow-up movies or anything like that down the line?
I think there always is. Some people don't make it, but not to say that there couldn't be, if there was an appetite for it, some form of the show or a standalone episode or a movie type of thing. There's always that possibility.
What's the plan for the Prison Break spinoff?
There is no plan for a Prison Break spinoff. We did a script for what would be establishing a character in season three, a female character and then getting her off into essentially a female prison show. [But] that project cooled. [It's not completely dead, though]. It's on the ground, legs twitching, but you know there's still a heartbeat perhaps.
Check out the clips below from Prison Break's new episode, which airs on Fox tonight at 9. Before the new ep, Fox is re-airing the fall finale from 8 to 9 p.m. The two-hour series finale airs May 15.
Are you excited that Prison Break is back? Sad to see it go?