Anytime Carlton Cuse is a showrunner for a series you can expect some twists along the way and the ending of Season 1 of Netflix‘s ‘Locke & Key’ is no exception. Now, he and co-showrunner Meredith Averill have been starting to talk about the first season and especially the huge ending that most didn’t see coming. Fans of the comic might have guessed it was on the way, but as someone who re-read the stories this was based on about a month back, I honestly wasn’t able to.
If you did, feel free to throw some shade in the comments below!
Not only did this twist work fantastically, but it also helped craft a narrative moving forward for the second season as well.
RELATED: ‘Locke And Key’ Creators Are Already Working On Season 2 Which Will Include Original Ideas And Those From The Comics
For those who haven’t had a chance to finish binging it yet, I can’t warn you enough, there is a huge spoiler below!
Ok, so it all comes down to the big reveal. According to Averill, this is how it was all brought together:
“We loved the story in the comic of Lucas coming back, and Zack Wells going to high school. But the issue with it is that [in the comics], Zack still looks like Lucas, so people are constantly recognizing him, and he just has to kill them because of it. We reimagined it as, well, what if Dodge was hiding in plain sight this whole season? What if the audience and our characters both didn’t know it? It serves the same function. Dodge is trying to embed himself/herself into the Lockes’ world, specifically Kinsey’s world. For Dodge, it makes a lot of sense to do that. We knew right away from the beginning of the writers’ room that Gabe would be introduced in Episode Two, because that’s after Dodge has been released from the well, and we would lay in all of these subtle clues: Gabe is also new to Matheson, Gabe seems to be hungry all the time in the same way as Dodge. There are all these subtle clues throughout. It was a fun challenge when we were breaking the episode. We had to be careful to never cut from a scene where Dodge appears in the form we call “Well Lady,” directly into a scene where Gabe is already in the scene. We need to play fair with the audience, and we need to allow there to be time for Dodge to leave a scene, use the Identity Key, and go back to turn into Gabe. It was really fun to craft that montage at the end, that basically shows you how he/she did it. “
Fans of ‘The Usual Suspects’ will understand why this was being thought of as “a Kobayashi mug moment”:
“We referenced that quite a bit. There were some Voldemort references, too. Harry Potter was referenced in the room all the time, specifically with that part. The moment where Griffin as Gabe is riding his bike and he has this devilish grin, he really sells it. It’s such a great moment when you realize he’s been Dodge all along.”
I love the slight twist that Averill and Cuse did to the source material that ended up delivering the same story in a surprisingly new way.
What did you think about the big twist at the end of ‘Locke & Key’? Did you see it coming? If so, what gave it away to you? If you’ve read the comics, can you appreciate how this was changed to tell the same story? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Source: THR
