The two-hour season finale of Alcatraz airs tonight at 8PM (ET) on FOX, and last week, we spoke with four of the show’s producers about what we can expect to see tonight and beyond.
Those producers we interviewed included Executive Producers Dan Pyne and Jennifer Johnson as well as Co-Creators/Co-Executive Producers Steven Lilien and Bryan Wynbrandt. They spoke with us about what answers are coming from tonight’s double feature and what more there is to look forward to.
“In the finale, you will get to see, finally, a little of Rebecca and her grandfather face to face,” Bryan Wynbrandt told us, revealing that the long-awaited confronation will finally happen. “You’re going to get more of an understanding of Hauser’s relationship with Lucy, both and present.”
“We’re going to go into the door, and we’re going to show you what’s behind the door,” Steven Lilien added, and Wynbrandt revealed that that revelation will answer new questions “and also ask new ones.”
“Each one of our episodes has the name of one of the inmates who comes back, and 13 is ‘Tommy Madsen.’ It’s called ‘Tommy Madsen.’ So it’s not just going to be a glimmer. We’re really going to get to know who he is. We’re going to get to know what he’s been doing since he’s been back,” Dan Pyne teased about the season finale.
“On a character level, people always ask about Ray Archer leaving Alcatraz to go raise Rebecca’s father, and we’re going to show you the genesis of that, and how that came to be. I think it’s incredibly exciting,” Lilien said.
Jennifer Johnson said that that the Tommy Madsen flashback story is something they had a “great time” writing, and it is very fundamental to Season 1. “We’re going to learn about Tommy Madsen’s experience on Alcatraz, and why he might be so important in the present day,” she said.
“We’re going to reveal why Ray would say in present day that he’ll kill him if he comes near Rebecca,” Pyne teased. “We’re going to find out a little bit why, in the past, Ray tried to help him, and then he changed his mind. We go right at that.”
“Throughout the season, people have been asking ‘well how do these ’63s get their guns, and how do they get assimilated? Are they being helped? We start to unravel what’s going on behind the scenes, and how they’re being facilitated and helped. There’s a character that we’ll be introducing in the 13th episode that has a larger role and purpose in Alcatraz,” Wynbrandt revealed.
“I think a lot of the questions the audience has, Rebecca herself is going to ask those questions when she comes face to face with Tommy. I think it’s going to be really satisfying,” Steven Lilien added.
“The finale is, as it should be, the most exciting, the most satisfying hour of the season,” Wynbrant said. “We have a two-parter which really plays as a two-parter, and we have an incredibly awesome flashback in 13. Epic, epic, awesome. If I was a fan of the show that didn’t work on it, and I watched that episode, I’d be very excited and very happy.”
“If anything, we kind of open another frontier of storytelling, which is what are the 63s doing behind the scenes in the present day, and how are the relationships that are built in the past, how do we see those manifest in the present day? How does the past affect the present? Because for us, or for Hauser, it feels like fifty years have passed, but for them, no time has passed. The relationships forged in the past are playing out in present day 2012 San Francisco and perhaps beyond San Francisco, as you’ll see in Episode 13,” Jennifer Johnson teased.
Don’t miss the season finale of Alcatraz tonight at 8PM (ET) on FOX. Images and more interviews about the finale can be found here and you’re all invited to come talk Alcatraz on our forum!
