The first season finale of Sheriff Country had Mickey Fox (Morena Baccarin) under investigation after she was forced to arrest her own father, Wes (W. Earl Brown), for drug dealing. The investigation was led by Eva Santos (Rachel Ticotin), boss of Mickey’s new DEA flame, Alec (Wes Chatham). But Mickey realized Wes was secretly the enforcer for Miranda (Kelli O’Hara) and even killed Miranda’s son Rick (Matthew Finlan) when the latter tried to kill Mickey’s daughter, Skye.
It led to a wild shootout, with Wes killed by Eva and Boone (Matt Lauria) shot and wounded but expected to recover while Miranda was arrested. Mickey met with Eva, who wanted help investigating a Bulgarian cartel moving into Edgewater. That would require using Wes as an informant. Mickey balked, but Eva threatened to reveal Mickey had been involved with a corrupt murderer in Alec to force her to agree.
Wes was brought into the office…and stared in shock at Eva, calling her "Maria" and saying, “I thought you were dead.” He then dropped the bomb on Mickey: Eva was Mickey’s long-believed-dead mother.
Speaking to TV Insider, showrunner Matt Lopez confirmed this twist had been planned for some time. The series had sprinkled in bits about Mickey discussing her mother dying in jail, Eva looking oddly emotional watching a video of Mickey and Wes together, and Eva earlier talking about how she knew of the sacrifices one had to make for justice. It looks like one such sacrifice was cutting off her husband and daughter.
Obviously, just how and why Eva decided to fake her death has to be revealed, while season 2 will delve into this very complex new family dynamic.
“One of the things we’ll unpack at the beginning of Season 2 is to what extent was Eva Santos trying to learn what kind of person her daughter is. She has been cut off from her daughter for years for reasons that we’ll get into and will become very clear. And I think the decision that she made all those years ago to leave Wes and Mickey, while it was a brutally hard decision and one that I think Eva has regrets about to this day, when the audience sees all the reasons that went into it, it’s not as simple as black and white. She was dealt a very bad hand of cards and she played it the best she could and believed she was doing what was best for her daughter. And we can question that decision and Mickey will question it.”
Eva had entered as an antagonist going after Mickey, but Lopez is confident fans will warm up to her now that they know of this connection and see how it develops.
Lopez teased that there will be a small time jump before flashing back to Mickey’s discovery about Eva. That will lead to the obvious confession of why Eva let her family think she was dead, how she’s working for the DEA and more, with a question of if Mickey lets anyone else know of their secret connection.
Season 1 had Mickey go through a wringer with her daughter nearly dying a couple of times, hunting a serial killer, arresting her own father for using her to cover up crimes, and finding out she’d been sleeping with a murderer. Dealing with her mother being alive all this time and now trying to reenter her life is her biggest challenge yet. Lopez is confident that makes season 2 even better.
“She really needs to repair herself, and she really needs to look inward and look in the mirror because she’s defined herself as a person who never had a mother, and now she learns she does. And what does that mean for who she is and how she raises her family and how her relationship with Skye, her relationship with Wes, and so on. I think we’ve got, if anything, an even better journey for Mickey in Season 2 than we had in Season 1.”
As fans await Sheriff Country's return, they’ll be looking forward to the fallout of this reveal and how it fires up season 2!
Sheriff Country is streaming on Paramount+.
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