[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers through the Season 1 finale of Debris, “Celestial Body.”]
All of the events throughout the first season of the NBC series Debris have been leading up to the revelations of the finale, blowing the possibilities wide open for where things could go next. As Agents Bryan Beneventi (Jonathan Tucker) and Finola Jones (Riann Steele) realized that there was so much more going on with the scattered wreckage from a destroyed alien spacecraft that has been strewn across the Western Hemisphere, their lives were changed forever, leaving them to wonder if there’s anyone they can trust apart from each other.
To discuss all of the twists and turns of Episode 113, “Celestial Body,” and what that will unlock for the next chapter of Debris, Collider got on the phone with show creator J.H. Wyman (Fringe, Almost Human) who talked about that final scene, figuring out how much of the story to tell this season, allowing time for world building, how closely he held to his season plan, lining up new characters, what Season 2 would look like, and how he would feel if this is where the story ends.
Collider: Please explain this finale to me.
J.H. WYMAN: I can’t give you too many secrets.
Can you talk a bit about the final moment of the season and what exactly is happening in that cave? What can you tease about what all of that means?
WYMAN: We find Finola, or a version of Finola, in suspensia. What you should know about that is, number one, Brill is much, much, much more knowledgeable about things than obviously we first thought. He may play a little bit of a bigger part, in his knowledge of what’s happening. For some reason, he has access to this version of Finola in suspensia. It’s no mistake that Brill’s last line is, “Okay, let’s begin.” Now, the doors will be blown off the series and now everything is going to expand. You’ll go back and recontextualize everything you’ve seen before it. I think it’s a healthy question to leave people with, as far as how is that possible that she’s in two places at the same time? What does that mean? Does that mean she’s a clone? Does that mean she’s from another reality? Whatever it is, I want people to keep guessing and anticipate coming back for those answers. It’s very crucial to Season 2, that discovery and that revelation.
There are some new characters. We have Dakheya, who first appeared in Episode 11, when he took his place in the Arizona desert, for reasons we didn’t understand. And then, in Episode 13, we realized why and we get that answer. Somehow and some way, this ball of light understands who he is and it goes to him, and he’s anticipating it and waiting, and brought it to where Brill is and where Finola is. So, there’s another leg of the journey in the odyssey that we’re about to serve and turn the page on the chapter. From my perspective, it was a great way to give it a last few paragraphs at the end of a chapter and begin another one.
How do you personally feel about cliffhangers? Do you like them, or do you find them frustrating? How do you react to them when you’re watching a show?
WYMAN: I don’t like ones where people don’t have answers. Unless they blow my mind and make me feel like, “Oh, my God, what does this mean?”, then I don’t find them frustrating. Then, I find them more like, “Oh, I can’t wait to come back.” I want to get the feeling like you’re about to catch a train and you’re reading this great book, and you have to stop reading and get up and get onto the train, and you wish you didn’t have to stop reading right now, and you can’t wait to get home and pick up that book again. That’s just good literature. You feel like you want to be pushed into the next chapter with all of the possibilities and wonderment possible.
What was your process for deciding where to end the season, how much to reveal, how much not to reveal, and what new questions you wanted to ask?
WYMAN: I’m telling the story that I want to tell. I knew and I know where the story’s going, and I felt that this was the proper way to dole out the information. At the end of the season, I knew what was going to happen and I chose to tell it in this way because this will give you the foot in, to come into Season 2 and realize that things are maybe a lot different than they seem. It’s no mistake that George Jones said to Finola, “There are things about this debris, you have no idea, and there are things you need to know. It’s really, really important that you come with me.” That’s not said lightly. There are still a lot of things to learn. I think I even said to you that the first season, for me, was always considered an origin story where people would be like, “Okay, I’m going to get my arms around this.” These pieces of debris are really messing with our physics and there’s this great drama that’s going on underneath it. But then, once the mythology kicks in and you start to realize, “Wait, there’s a lot more going on here then I first anticipated,” the show becomes a little bit more rewarding. This is the end of the first chapter only. We introduced certain characters, we understand people’s positions, we understand the world that they live in, we understand their trials and tribulations, and off we go. I really knew that, when Brill said, “Let’s begin,” that was the point of it all.
After Fringe and Almost Human, does it feel easier or harder or about the same, when it comes to telling a sci-fi genre story with an ongoing mythology and getting the time and space that you need to be able to tell it?
WYMAN: Well, it’s funny because it’s world-building. On Fringe, I had 22 episodes to hook an audience and tell a story and have it unwind. It’s tough is because I get a pilot and 12 episodes to tell this sprawling epic odyssey, so I have to be really careful about where I choose to accentuate things. For instance, some people may not like that there wasn’t a premise pilot, and some people loved that it wasn’t a premise pilot. Everybody’s going to feel something different. I don’t have time to focus on things that I don’t think are important to understanding the whole odyssey and things that are really connected to theme and really connected to the story and the reasons why I’m telling the story.
Every time you try to do something, the bar’s a little higher. You learn a lot and you take it away. I can only tell stories the way that I tell them and that are really passionate for me and really reflect my work and my fingerprint, so somebody can say, “I know that’s his work. This is what he loves to riff on. This is the art he loves to make.” I think the audience is really smart, and they’re only getting smarter. If there’s not every answer right away and people can have the patience these days to sit and really be rewarded, I think that’s worth it. Part of the television experience, at least for me, is the realizations of what my character is going through and what the world is. When you’re building these worlds, it takes time. So, it’s about the same, but it’s a little bit harder because I only have 13 episodes a season, not 22, to maybe focus on things that I would.
You’ve said that you have a pretty solid plan for five seasons and you do like to plan out where you’re going. How much of the season finale is exactly what you expected it would be? Are there things that changed or evolved at all, as you got deeper into the season and watched what the cast was doing and what the show was shaping into?
WYMAN: The season finale was exactly as I thought. The actors brought things, as they always do. Actors are going to just transcend what you’re doing, especially when you’ve got guys like Jonathan [Tucker] or Riann [Steele] or John Noble or Tyrone [Benskin] or Sebastian [Roché]. All of these amazing actors we have, if you really get down what you’re doing with them and you understand their creation and what we’re making together, it only enhances the story that’s being told. Some actors don’t want to know where you’re going. They want to play it day to day. Norbert [Leo Butz] was like that. Norbert loved to pick up the scripts and read them and go, “Oh, my God, what does that mean?” Whereas I told Jonathan every moment of every scene and every scene, and same with Riann. Once you lay a plan down, if there’s a good idea that comes up and it’s something that I didn’t see or something that’s been presented to me that I find interesting, then I’ll meander. You can afford to meander a little, as long as you have a track to get back to.
Like I said, the first season was just an origin story, so I didn’t have a lot of time to meander. I had very specific things I needed to talk about and put in, so that in Season 2, people will be like, “Oh, man!” If you go back in the show, we mentioned the ball of light in Episode 2 and we also mentioned in it Episode 8. Like on Fringe, we were putting the amber on the bus and, all of a sudden, the amber became a really important thing to the whole mythology. Those are the types of long haul things I’m really interested in. It could be that in Season 2, there’s a revelation where you go back to another episode. Even to understand what suspensia is, we needed to have an episode that was about suspensia.
In regard to John Noble, how did his appearance on the show come about? Did you always know that he’d be a part of the final episode of the season? How did you end up having him on the show?
WYMAN: I love John. We have a great friendship and we collaborate so well together. My challenge was that, in order to get him and work with him again and get him on board, it had to be a character that was complex and had a lot of layers and would blow people’s minds, and allow John to use what John does, which is that he’s got so many layers and so many levels and so many tools at his disposal. So, when I conceived Otto and I realized what he was and how he would be and how the character would develop, I called John and said, “Okay, I have this thing I want to talk to you about. What do you think?” He said, “Oh, my God, that sounds great. I really love it.” I sent him a laundry list with so much to insight. I’m sure there were several contradictions, but he nailed it, even better than I ever could have imagined.
I wanted to give something to John that is going to be the beginning of a character where you’re like, “Who is this guy? What is he doing? Oh, my God!” It’s a character that definitely got John to reach those heights. To be honest with you, I think it’s absolutely criminal that he wasn’t recognized for his work on Fringe. That’s just so unfair. He works not for the awards, I’ll say that. He works because he loves to work. He doesn’t care. He’s just in it, one hundred percent. But I wanted to be able to give him something that’s the complete antithesis of Walter Bishop. He’s a psychopath, for sure. The levels that this man plays is just going to make people go, “Oh, my God, I forgot how incredible an actor this guy is.”
His character seems pretty sure about who Bryan Beneventi is, but Bryan seems to be a little more unsure about what’s going on. Are you planning to delve deeper into just what Bryan experienced in that debris event and what’s going on with him?
WYMAN: Yes, absolutely. This is the amount of story I’ve told. We understood that Bryan’s taking injections for something, but we didn’t really understand for what. Then, we got to the point where we met Garcia and Garcia asked him about the injections, so we assumed Garcia, who has been afflicted with this scarred face and very, very, very, very small retinas, had something obviously otherworldly happen to him. What I’ve also been doing, that I’m not sure if everybody is aware of, is that on the Peacock version and the Hulu version, when the credits are going, we’re getting some transmissions, and those transmissions talk about that day and talk about that event just slightly, to prepare people for what’s coming. Ultimately, what Otto says to him is, “I know who you are. There was Garcia, Ming, and you. You’re the third man. You’re the third person who was involved in this incident.” He says something quite cryptic when he says, “They’ve done a great job hiding your identity.”
How and what Otto knows about this event, why it’s important to him, and why it’s even noteworthy, are all things that we’re hopefully going to learn in Season 2. The concept of what happened to Bryan is extremely important and I hope it’s laid bare. He’s taking shots and nothing has really happened, but it saved his life. Something that’s in him, something that’s around him, something that has affected his biology, has allowed him to come out of that situation unscathed. That’s what alerted Otto to realize, “I know what’s going on here. There’s only one way that can happen, and now I know who he is.” What that revelation means is, to me, a massive part of Season 2 as well. We’ll learn much more about Chinese Agent Ming, we’ll learn more about Garcia, and we’re going to learn more about Bryan and what happened that day and what those early responders encountered.
What made you decide to do those transmissions for streaming?
WYMAN: The original idea came from how I just wanted to have something instead of music because there’s so much music and sound in this show. Someone asked, “Hey, what are you going to do for the end credits? What kind of music do you want to make?” I said, “I don’t want any music. I just want it to be space transmissions, but I’m not sure what they’re going to say.” And then, we started kicking it around and just said, “Why don’t we just tell more of that story? That would be something cool.” We felt it was unused real estate, and I could do these Easter egg things. And then, it was pointed out to me that NBC, because of their business model, has to announce other shows and have music, so we decided to do it as an extra reward for people who are watching it again, or who are watching it on streaming. From my experience and from the comments that I’m getting, people are really appreciating it.
What is the sci-fi that most influenced you? Were there specific stories you saw as a kid that you feel were a direct path or a gateway drug to you telling the type of stories that you tell now?
WYMAN: I grew up looking at European films and French films, and Krzysztof Kieslowski films were a huge influence on me. Dekalog was sublime and done way, way, way, way ahead of his time. I was influenced how to tell stories by Krzysztof Kieslowski because he works in metaphor, also. He was astounding, with Three Colors – Red, White, and Blue and The Double Life of Véronique, and all of these amazing stories that are about what’s important, connection and people. I always had that interior and I’m very interested in that. And then, I had the other side, which was influenced by Blade Runner. That changed my life, of course, like so many people. I like bombastic things. I like Tony Scott and Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. I like things that are big. I used to sit on the roof, after I watched Close Encounters as a kid, and I used to hope and hope and hope that I would see something.
I was always a viewer of things. I felt a lot, as a child. The world didn’t really make a lot of sense to me sometimes. I thought things were quite sad sometimes. Basically, that juxtaposition and the meeting of those two things will hopefully be a representation of my work. I always try to go for human connection and the human connections that you make. A lot of mistakes can be easily made, if you forget that and you go off into the technological aspects and you forget that this stuff is supposed to illuminate humanity. I love to dream. I’m a person who’s filled with wonder and hope and am in awe of our existence. I look at the idea of, what does it mean to be here? That’s my basis for everything. When stories are conceived in my mind, they always start with something that I care deeply about, and then unwind from there.
So, if this show doesn’t get renewed, which would be tragic and sad, and this is where you leave things, how would you feel about that?
WYMAN: That’s a good question. It’s weird because I know that I put in 110 percent, every day. The people that I work with and my crew do the same. There are just certain things you can’t control, but what I can control is my work. I would be upset because I feel like there’s so much story left to tell and it’s a really cool idea. I’m hoping that there’s some room for elevated television on network, in a way that was missing, but I could be wrong. You just have to do your work as well as you can and step back, and whatever happens, is completely out of my hands.
I pitched them the entire second season. They knew some of it when they bought it, and they were an excellent creative team. It was a fantastic experience, working with NBC. They got it. There are a lot of fans of the show inside the building and a lot of people that believe in it, one hundred percent. There’s nothing to blame. Either it works or it doesn’t. A lot of times, people say, “Oh, I never really got to do what I wanted to do.” I got to do what I wanted to do. This is it. I love the show. I think it’s super cool. We all believe in it. We’re in a very difficult time and it managed to keep some people working and paying their mortgages, which I was really happy about. We managed to get it on the air. Fans probably want answers and I know that’s very frustrating. I might try to see if there’s another outfit that would potentially air it, but that would also be a tragedy because you have to grow things.
Fringe took 22 episodes in the first season to get an audience and the first reviews were dismal. It was really hard. And then, what happened was that people got it and went, “Oh, okay, I see what they’re doing.” To give something 13 episodes, where it’s building this cool mythology, it’s holding its numbers. The people who love this kind of work, love this kind of work. I would be very sad because it feels like there’s a lot of story to tell. The only way that I can go to sleep at night is knowing that I did it 110 percent.
Debris is available to stream at Peacock and Hulu.
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