‘Coldwater’ Boss Explains Finale Ending — What Could Happen in Season 2

John (Andrew Lincoln) and Fiona’s (Indira Varma) attempt to get their hands on evidence proving their neighbor Tommy (Ewen Bremner) is a serial killer during a sit-down lunch, but it goes south, ultimately resulting in John and Tommy facing off as they struggle over a gun in a field. John is shot but fortunately survives, and Tommy is MIA at the end of the season. Tommy’s wife, Rebecca (Eve Myles), who very much knew all about his bad deeds, plays the innocent, hurt party who had no idea who she’d married. But she’s obviously keeping her eye on her neighbors, especially John, who continues to attend Bible study in her house.

Below, creator David Ireland breaks down the finale and teases what we could see in a second season of this British drama.

Tommy is so certain that John is like him. John insists he’s not, but Tommy did clearly bring something out in John. It’s just that John knows how to use that in the right way versus how Tommy is. So in a way, did John need all of this to happen, or something like it, to change from who he was at the beginning of the series?

David Ireland: Yes. I think that’s the idea that he has to — he does start the series as a coward and someone who runs away, whereas I think that through meeting Tommy, through encountering something and someone genuinely evil, he finds out who he really is.

And also like John and Fiona’s marriage, something like this, that would bring out that brutal honesty, right?

Yeah, it brings them together. That’s the thing. It makes them closer.

So in their struggle, the gun goes off, and John is the one who is shot. Could Tommy have shot John, or John have shot Tommy, if it had been a decision that needed to be made in that moment?

Yeah, that’s a good question. I feel like when we were coming up with that scene, we had hours and hours of conversations. I think that Tommy could have killed John, and John could have killed Tommy. I think both of them are capable of killing each other.

So the season ends with quite a bit left up in the air. Where’s Tommy? How do John and Fiona move forward? Do they realize that Rebecca’s not innocent? That ring is still in their house. Talk about leaving so much up in the air at the end of the season.

Well, I think initially, when I came up with the idea, I really wanted to give it all a definite closing. I kind of thought of it as a limited series. I never thought about Series 2, but when I was coming near the end of writing it, people started talking about a Series 2. So yeah, I wanted to leave lots of things open so I would have lots to play with when it came to writing Series 2. Yeah, I have lots of ideas about where it goes, so I wanted to keep them all possible.

What can you say about where the show can go next? Because I need to see Season 2.

[Laughs] Well, there’s a few … I mean, we’ve talked about various different possibilities. I really enjoy the four main characters, and I really want to see more of them. So I really want to write what happens next between Tommy and Rebecca and what Rebecca is like — I don’t think Tommy will be living in the town anymore, so what Rebecca is like on her own in Coldwater and what being away from Tommy brings out of her. And I think there’s also a question of if Tommy is away from Rebecca, if you’ve got two kind of codependent killers, what are they like when they’re separate from each other?

And you’ve left John and Fiona in a good place, but it’s like, can they stay in that good place given their history?

Yeah, that’s the question. I think more should come in Series 2 to challenge them. And there’s also the question of why do they stay in Coldwater? Why do they not just run back to London?

Rebecca seemingly fools Fiona with her reaction after she tells her about Tommy. And at the end, John’s still going over to her house for Bible study. So, do John and Fiona suspect how involved Rebecca is at all or how much she knew? Are they suspicious of her?

Well, I think Fiona’s naturally a bit more skeptical than John and John’s quite trusting and John’s a little bit naive. So, I think certainly John wants to see the best in Rebecca. And I think everybody does. And I think that’s the brilliance of having someone like Eve Myles because she is completely convincing both as a very decent person and as a cold-blooded psychopath. But I think Fiona can see that Rebecca’s not — well, I think she’s quite skeptical. I think she’s on the fence about Rebecca. I think she thinks, how could you live with someone and not know that they’re a killer?

And Rebecca left the ring in John and Fiona’s house, clearly setting them up for that murder. But I’m curious, how far is she willing to go? Because she is more calculating and in control than Tommy.

Well, I think it’s a question for me of, how devoted is she to Tommy? Is she willing to throw Tommy under the bus? Certainly by the end of Episode 6, she’s happy to kind of put all the blame on Tommy to try to save herself, which again is similar to all the sort of stuff about Fred West and Rose West and various killers throughout history. Is she about surviving or does she really need Tommy? I’m not sure she needs Tommy, but I think Tommy needs her.

What did you want to do with that fantastic lunch scene with so much going on in the finale? It was fantastic.

Thank you. I really like that scene. I think it was a lot longer as well in that I think we had to cut about 10 minutes from it because it went on for so long. And I think if I remember correctly, the cast kept breaking when they were shooting it. They just couldn’t get through without laughing. It was such a fun scene to write, and it was a fun scene for them to act. I come from a theater background and I mainly write plays. So I always had this idea that the last episode should kind of be in a very fixed location and should take place as much in someone’s house as possible. And I just thought it was really funny and interesting to have a kind of awkward dinner party scene in such dark circumstances.

Are there any other cliffhangers or big moments you considered for the finale that you ended up scrapping?

Yeah, there was a few. It went through various rewrites from early stages, but yeah, there was a lot, but I can’t quite remember them now.

Coldwater, Streaming Now, Paramount+

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