'The Ark' writers 'went through so many iterations' of explosive Season 1 finale for new SYFY series

The mission of Ark One exploded into a million tiny pieces in the Season 1 finale of SYFY's The Ark when Proxima B — aka the last planetary hope for the human race — literally exploded into a million tiny pieces (Alderaan-style!). 

Sitting down for an after-show interview, Episode 12 writer John-Paul Nickel revealed that the show's four-person creative team "went through so many iterations" on how to best close out the debut season.

RELATED: 'The Ark's Dean Devlin & Jonathan Glassner on their passion to build optimistic sci-fi worlds

"I don't want to talk about too many of them — because there were some really goods ideas in there that could come up in future seasons — but I don't remember if it was specifically my idea," he confessed. "We knew we needed to do something like that. We knew we needed a cliffhanger. We knew we wanted to resolve a lot of these emotional arcs, tie up some of these mysteries, but still leave a cliffhanger, so that people know there is more story to tell. As opposed to just tying it up neatly in a bow, which is one option we could've done."

Nickel went on to hint that not every character made it out of the finale alive. "Who lives and dies?" he mused. "Because you'll notice in the last couple scenes, you don't see some people ... We want them all to live, but we don't always get what we want in life."

In a separate interview, series co-creator Jonathan Glassner (Stargate SG-1) stated that the original ending was "a little darker and the network rightfully said, 'We think there needs to be a little more hope.' The hope that we added of Maddox's ship coming was always in our head [of] how we would start next season. We just pulled it forward to this season to show that there's a chance. And to their credit, it's much better that way, because it also pays off Garnet's whole thing ... of people have to be given the chance to do the right thing."

WATCH SYFY'S THE ARK EPISODE 12 AFTER-SHOW BELOW:

Glassner and fellow co-creator Dean Devlin (Stargate, Independence Day) serve as executive producers on the show with Marc Roskin and Rachel Olschan-Wilson. Jonathan English and Steve Lee are producers.

The complete first season of The Ark is now streaming on Peacock. A second season was officially green-lit earlier this month.

Looking for even more sci-fi content? Check out shows like Resident Alien, Space: 1999, Brave New World, Project Blue Book, Eureka, Heroes, Intergalactic, Battlestar Galactica, Heroes, and more streaming now on Peacock.