The Crossing’s showrunners break down [Spoiler]’s death and more [Exclusive]

The Crossing Episode 4 ended with a twist that very few people would have seen coming at the start of the episode. Showrunners Jay Beattie and Dan Dworkin break down that twist, this earlier migration, and more in this exclusive interview.

There are likely plenty of people screaming at the TV screens now. The Crossing Season 1, Episode 4 ended with a death that will change everything.

RIP, Emma Ren. It’s been fun knowing you and we’d hoped Jude had someone on the inside to figure out all the conspiracies, secrets and lies.

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Now it doesn’t seem that way. Jude is back on the outside unless Sophie is able to help in any way. Meanwhile, Marshall is attempting to learn more about Hannah and Reece continues her search for her daughter.

The Crossing showrunners, Jay Beattie and Dan Dworkin, break down that shocking ending, the earlier migration, and more in this exclusive interview with Hidden Remote.

Dan Dworkin: Nice to talk to you again!

HR: I’m not happy with you. Why? Why?

Jay Beattie: Are you mad at us?

HR: Yes!

DD: You wouldn’t happen to be referring to the shooting of Agent Ren [Sandrine Holt], would you?

HR: YES! She’s been my favorite character.

JB: Oh is she?

DD: I feared that. I thought some would appreciate the twist but then the few that would really like her would be mad. Sorry.

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HR: It’s hard. From a writing point of view, I definitely appreciated that twist. It was a twist I never saw coming. But I really liked her!

DD: We did, too!

HR: So is that it? Is she definitely gone?

JB: Well, there’s going to be some questions surrounding her in the ensuing episodes.

DD: You’ll get clarity in the next few episodes on what exactly her status is.

HR: That sounds ominous

[Laughter…]

Yeah it makes it a challenge for anyone investigating her death/disappearance, as it were, to find out the truth.

HR: I mean, she has just spotted that this guy she’s been dealing with is somehow linked. How can all this come out if she’s really gone?

JB: Yeah it makes it a challenge for anyone investigating her death/disappearance, as it were, to find out the truth. As writers, we like to set up a high hurdle for ourselves. But we thought, narratively, this was a great choice for the show and for her character.

DD: For Eve’s character, certainly.

JB: For Eve’s character, yeah, for sure. And we embraced it and ran with it and knew it would be controversial. We think once you watch the rest of the series, you’ll see how it all pulls together.

HR: So, Eve, her connection to Paul. Did she know Paul had come back through? Is this something we’ll find out soon?

DD: Yeah, in the next episode.

JB: Yeah, the next episode is very heavy on Craig Lindauer [Jay Karnes] and the earlier migration. You’ll get a deep dive into who those people are, why they came here, and what their agenda might be.

DD: And yes, that question you just asked will be answered along with other questions about Eve and Lindauer and the earlier migration.

HR: I get the feeling from a couple of episodes ago that they want to stop Apex from happening.

DD: Right.

JB: That’s correct.

DD: That historically has been their plan. What happens now that the new migration is here to change that plan or affect that plan, that’s something that will be explored in Episode 5.

HR: Surely their plan is to stop Apex but now they need to find a new way of doing something. Whatever plan they’re on isn’t happening.

DD: Right, in the second episode there’s a quick mention from, I don’t think we ever said his name, but internally his name is Beaumont. The character played by Steve Harris, the kind of black ops assassin guy who gets his neck turned around. He said something to Lindauer about he’s dismayed. These new refugees arriving mean their plan in their sleeper plan to positively affect the future didn’t work. So this new migration signifies whatever they tried to do didn’t work and that’s what we’re going to talk about in Episode 5.

It’s very convincing isn’t it when Eve mentions how Paul joined a cult and may be a crazy person and not at all what he says.

HR: Eve mentioned pamphlets and another group. Were they about her group or is this some other group her husband was connected to?

JB: It’s very convincing isn’t it when Eve mentions how Paul joined a cult and may be a crazy person and not at all what he says. I think it’s just a very convincing performance and a mislead to get out of the room and go get a gun because she’ realize Emma is too close to the truth.

HR: But had she sent Emma on her way, no one would have known.

DD: Well, I think Emma, we’ve started to see that Emma is a pretty [stubborn] investigator and she’s suspicious of Lindauer. And she was suspicious of Eve. Eve sensed that in her and realized Emma wasn’t a problem that would just go away.

HR: The other storyline that I pulled into was Sophie [Georgina Haig]. She wants to help Leah and stop this outbreak. Is it possible now she’s got to Reece to help Leah [Bailey Skodje]?

DD: That’s certainly the hope. We’ve seen in the flashbacks or flash-forwards, whatever you want to call them, that Reece has used her biochemistry to treat Leah before. This is just a race against the clock now to see if they can produce that antidote quickly enough. So, we’ll see what happens.

HR: Could this lead to some sort of cure or vaccine before this disease even makes it to Earth?

DD: It could.

JB: It could, yeah! Certainly, if Leah was effectively quarantined and the threat was neutralized, but it’s always possible it can rear its head. It’s certainly possible that Reece’s immune system can be used to create some type of vaccine.

HR: It’s the fun of time travel. Like, did this have to happen to start the disease? My mind started to hurt trying to think of it all.

DD: Oh yeah!

JB: Yeah, the chicken and the egg conundrum.

DD: Don’t go down the time travel rabbit hole!

HR: So, how far is Reece willing to go to get to Leah?

DD: If she hasn’t made it clear already, she will go to any lengths.

JB: I think it’s her number one directive to give Leah a life she couldn’t give to her in the future. I think she’d do that at the expense of everything, including her own life.

DD: It’s not like she has anything else here. The whole reason she’s here is for Leah, so it’s not like she’s just going to drop it and go work at Starbucks. She’ll do what it takes, for sure.

HR: But when she was with Ollie, there was sort of a maternal side that came out from her. She wasn’t threatening, she didn’t make him scared. It was almost like she knew she was never going to hurt him.

DD: That’s true. I think that’s a reflection of Reece’s humanity and her own relationship with her own daughter. I think the sense was she wasn’t going to hurt him. But then we’ve seen Reece do some pretty intense things, so if push were to have come to shove in that episode, maybe she would have. But thankfully she didn’t have to.

HR: You also want people to like her and there’s no coming back from killing a child.

JB: No.

DD: Certainly not!

HR: So, I’ve got a little time left to ask you about Hannah [Kelley Missal] and Marshall [Tommy Bastow]. Someone has told her to go find him. This is definitely the right guy. It wasn’t a locket with someone else and it’s going to be some time travel mix-up, right? It’s definitely him.

JB: Yeah! The picture is pretty clear. It’s him and she had a pretty good idea about where she was going to end up and someone said: “this is a good man who could help you.” That also raises some questions about…well, what was interesting to us is that when you meet Marshall in real life he’s kind of a mess. You’re forced to wonder what people in the future know of this kid and what did he become?

HR: And why did he become it?

JB: And why did he become it? And will his knowledge if Hannah were to tell him affect his future? Will it knock him off course? It raises a lot of interesting questions, which is what we want to explore with those two.

DD: This is also 180 years into the future where someone has this locket or this photo at least that’s been handed down for many, many, many generations. Who even knows if this information was correct about this guy?

You get the sense that maybe Hannah didn’t get a ton of information about who this guy was, so she’s just going on what she knows, which is very little but enough because she’s looking for hope.

HR: Was it her family that gave her this locket? Did she pick it up from elsewhere?

DD: We have an internal story for where the locket came from. She explains it in a little bit more details later. Basically, in a few episodes from now, we do an episode where we go to that day where the refugees in the future went on this exodus to find the threshold to travel back here and you see her with the locket at that point. And you see kind of what a mad rush, how chaotic it was which was kind of hinted at in the pilot. You get the sense that maybe Hannah didn’t get a ton of information about who this guy was, so she’s just going on what she knows, which is very little but enough because she’s looking for hope.

HR: Right, because she’s, in the future, hope was gone for her.

DD: For all of them, yeah.

HR: Will we see her being an Apex conspirator and the story she’s told of her father somehow link to Marshall?

DD: Maybe.

JB: Possibly? We’re yet to reveal the intricacies of that, so we don’t want to spoil anything.

DD: It’s a little bit more exploration like Jay was talking about before, about how this affects Marshall in the present. It’s interesting, because you think it’s going to be about Hannah and Marshall in the future but it actually becomes a story about Marshall in the present and what this kind of disruption, this introduction of this girl and this locket and this purported future that he has, what it does to him as a human being.

HR: He already seems to be changing from the glimpse that you got of him.

DD: Yeah, he’s starting, for sure.

All the other questions I had would have been major spoilery and there was no way either was going to answer them, but hopefully, this is enough to tide you over until the next episode. The Crossing is certainly shaping up to be the mystery of the year and I sincerely hope it will get a second season. It deserves it!

Next: The Crossing showrunners talk influences for new mystery series

What did you think of the shocking ending? Are you excited to learn more about the earlier migration? What do you think about Marshall’s story development? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

The Crossing continues Mondays at 10/9c on ABC.