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Teacup Showrunner Reveals All on Season 1 Finale: "We Wanted Something That Was Visceral..."
Teacup showrunner Ian McCulloch talks to SYFY WIRE about Season 1, and what might come next.
SPOILERS AHEAD for all of Teacup Season 1!
The Peacock original series Teacup set itself up as an intimate character drama surrounded by sci-fi horror trappings from the very beginning. Thanks to an ensemble cast and loads of atmosphere, showrunner Ian McCulloch and the show's writers and directors were able to build a little world on a remote farm contained by a mysterious forcefield, then gradually grow that world as the characters discovered more and more about their circumstances.
Then, in the Season 1 finale, that world was blown wide open by a series of major developments and revelations that set up an even bigger story outside the few cares they were trapped in. To unpack it all, SYFY WIRE sat down with McCulloch to talk about how that ending came about, and what might come next if we potentially get Teacup Season 2.
How Teacup Built That Heartbreaking Finale Moment
Throughout the final episodes of the season, viewers watched as the alien presence known only as "Assassin" infiltrated the Chenoweth farm, passing from person to person until, finally, it ended up inside Meryl (Emilie Bierre). Desperate to save their daughter, James (Scott Speedman) and Maggie (Yvonne Strahovski) decided to take the advice of Harbinger, the visitor inside their son Arlo (Caleb Dolden) and attempt to drown Meryl, then bring her back, hopefully with Assassin purged from her.
The plan worked, and Maggie was able to revive Meryl, but not before Assassin found a new home inside James. As the rest of the group prepared to cross the Blue Line with help from the liquid harvested by Ruben (Chaske Spencer), Maggie was left with no choice but to trap James inside the family's chest-style freezer, leaving him to suffocate with Assassin still in his body. It's a tragic end for one of the show's most complex characters, and according to McCulloch, it had to happen that way.
"It needed to be James because of the story we were telling with James's character," McCulloch explained. "His redemption arc, as it were, needed to have a final beat to it that felt satisfying. We started off from the word go, from the first episode, he's kind of playing catch up as far as empathy from the audience, as far as making peace with his wife, as far as being a character who is a good person who's done some bad things. And this seemed like a way for, without hitting the nail on the head too hard, a way for him to redeem himself without it feeling too convenient. Would he choose to die the way he did? No. But the fact that he did felt like a really nice way to conclude his story. So to me it always felt like that's where his story was going to end, and that's where Assassin would end up."
And just to dispel any confusion for viewers hoping for a twist resurrection, McCulloch did confirm that "James is dead" for us...though he didn't say the same about Assassin.
Unpacking the Big Finale Cliffhanger, and Setting Up Season 2
With James gone, the Chenoweth's and their neighbors set out on a journey to find "the machine" that Harbinger has told them about, in the hope that it will save humanity and prevent the invasion of more Assassins. They all pile into a van, leaving only Ellen Chenoweth (Kathy Baker) behind to care for the animals on the farm. McCulloch confirmed that "I have ideas" about Ellen's eventual fate, and that he has a desire to one day return to the farm, but there's barely time to think about that aspect of the story before something else looms.
In the season's final scene, two strangers emerge and reveal that they're from McNab's (Rob Morgan) online community of visitor watchers, and that they've come to help. But they've barely started talking before that mysterious car belonging to McNab's old partner Hayden shows up, and a mysterious new character (Alice Kremelberg) reveals that McNab's friends were sleeper Assassins, and the Assassins everywhere are waking up.
"We didn't want to go into the world of tentpole epics, big explosions, but we wanted something that was visceral, something that was physical, something that was unexpected," McCulloch said of the ending. "So having the car, stuck with the car, and Carol and Milo's demise felt fitting. But as with the entire show from episode one on, everything is one step forward, two steps back for our characters, and everything is out of the frying pan and into the fire. And to my mind, it seemed like a very Teacup thing to do to have one threat neutralized, and then you have no idea whether what neutralized that threat is a threat in and of itself, or if it's their salvation."
So, what do our new arrivals mean for Season 2? McCulloch's not saying, but we do know that the family is still out to find Harbinger's machine, and we know that sleeper Assassins are indeed waking up. It all suggests a bigger world with even more threats, but whatever shape a potential Season 2 might take, McCulloch still wants to tell a story that's centered on a small group of characters moving through a dangerous world.
"Any widening of the world that we do, and we need to do it because literally they leave the farm and the show is a long form narrative, so we need to widen the iris just because the story needs to become the story it's going to become," he said. "But however wide it gets, and it will be wider if we were to have a Season 2, it will still be from these people's experience. It is these people's experience of whatever form this invasion takes. So it's not like it's going to suddenly change in Season 2, Season 3 into Independence Day, where it's all sorts of characters around the world."
Teacup Season 1 is now streaming on Peacock.
