[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Big Door Prize Season 2 finale “Deercoming.”]
Each stage of the Morpho machine just leaves us with more questions, and the latest now leaves us really needing The Big Door Prize to be renewed for Season 3.
Dusty (Chris O’Dowd) and Cass (Gabrielle Dennis) reach a breaking point in their marriage following their selfploration this season. Hana (Ally Maki) goes looking for answers after starting to wonder if she should have used the Morpho machine at the bar in which she worked before coming to Deerfield. And Dusty’s determination to get answers from the Morpho machine, using the Guide card (Colton’s) leaves him in quite the position at the end of the season.
Below, the stars and creator David West Read break down the key moments from the Season 2 finale and ponder what could be ahead if the series is renewed.
Where Is Dusty at the End of Season 2?
Dusty, after Cass decides she’s had enough of his remarks holding her back, is alone at the end of the season when he sees a white deer then goes to the Morpho machine and inserts the Guide card (after it had said to see Guide at the end of Episode 9). “To achieve your potential you must discover who you are,” reads the machine. Dusty then sees himself as well as the rest of the Deerfield residents as video game characters. He hits Continue, then the blue butterfly appears onscreen. Its wings flap faster and faster until… Dusty’s suddenly somewhere else? In the machine? He presses his hand on the glass in front of him as someone approaches from the other side in the fog…
Read can’t say anything specifically about that ending but notes to TV Insider, “Dusty goes on probably the biggest emotional rollercoaster of anyone in the show because he starts out being the most opposed to the machine, the most scared of the machine, the most anxious about the machine to, in some ways, the most obsessed with the machine in the second season. And it just felt fitting that Dusty would be the first person to enter whatever that next, next stage is, which we want to leave really open to interpretation right now.”
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O’Dowd was reminded of the 1992 film The Lawnmower Man, “this very interesting virtual reality movie. This guy goes into a thing and he kind of gives himself over to the machine entirely and that version of himself starts becoming more and more real. I dug the vibe of it, the whole design of it, and obviously Sarah [Walker] and David and the writing team have put together such a mysterious ending.”
Dusty & Cass’ Separation
After ostensibly just spending time apart but planning to come back together, Dusty and Cass end the season very much separated, with her calling him out on being confused about choosing between her and Alice (Justine Lupe), whom he’d dated during their selfploration, and seemingly being hung up on the other woman as well as the remarks that she’s felt have been holding her back.
Without the Morpho machine, it would have taken “a lot more years, definitely a lot more time” for her to reach that decision, says Dennis. “I think the Morpho machine just makes everything more magnified and you pay attention to things, even little things as subtle is the commentary and the jokes that Dusty would make. Like she said, there’s a lot of them on the surface, one here or there, but when you spend 20 years with someone and it’s constantly feeling like that, and now you’re focused specifically on trying to grow and you’re now hearing those little jabs are actually louder now than they were before… The Morpho machine just kind of helped open her eyes to her obstacles that are in her way. So yeah, I think it helps her. It’s scary. It was frightening, but she’s got to do it. You just need that push. And I think that Morpho really, for some people, helps push them through the door it figure out what’s on the other side.”
Is there anything Dusty should have done differently, or is there where the two were meant to end up? “It’s hard to know what we’re meant to do really, or if there is any predestined path that we should follow,” according to O’Dowd. “But I think where they end up is interesting. Even if it has been destabilizing, it feels like where we found them wasn’t necessarily as stable as it actually felt.”
Hana’s Recording
Hana came to Deerfield with a history with a Morpho machine, which she slowly opens up about this season. And after not using that one (but having those blue dots), she can’t help but wonder if she should have. She and Father Reuben (Damon Gupton) travel to that bar (it’s closed up) in the finale, and the machine is no longer there. She admits she didn’t use the machine because her dad always talked to her about her “potential” but didn’t give her enough to reach it and never cared about her, so she avoided doing anything with the education he bought her that could be construed as achieving said potential.
Waiting at that bar, however, is a Morpho blue envelope with HANA across the front. Inside is an old tape player. On the tape is Hana’s father talking to her about what they did that day … and the Morpho song?!
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That “represents everything” for Hana, says Maki. “It’s everything she’s been running from, it’s all of the reasons for the unanswered questions she has about her past. It was definitely such an emotional thing to film as well and not something I was expecting when I read that because I try not to look too far ahead and I kind of purposely choose to not know before the character knows. I was in shock that that was where the season landed at the end, and it just seems to open up a whole new can of worms.”
She calls that last scene with Hana “a moment of healing for her. She had a lot of questions of whether her father loved her and if he cared about her. And I think you see there was a time when he did and when they had this great relationship. So I look at it as this very beautiful therapeutic moment for her that is closure, but also opens up a whole new set of questions.”
Read points out that Hana first comes across as “a side character, the bartender who’s never going to have her own storyline. By the end of the first season, everyone’s looking to her for all of the answers about the machine. The second season, you realize that even she doesn’t know everything that she wants to know or everything we would want her to know. And she is getting closer and closer to the mystery and the origin of where this machine came from and also realizing that she may be connected to that origin,” he teases.
That Deercoming Float & Song
As part of Deercoming and the float for Giorgio’s, Cass and Nat (Mary Holland) dress up as meatballs. Cass uses the announcement about a meatball truck making deliveries to pointedly tell Dusty “we are done” before launching into a song that, as happens in TV and film, drives home a message that affects multiple characters.
“We have an amazing set designer, Natasha Gerasimova, and costume designer, Colin Wilkes, who, every time I threw something like this at them, just so far exceeded my expectations. To just say, can you make a giant meatball spaghetti tower? And then we’re going to dress up one of our characters as a meatball and have her rise up from within the tower and be showered in Parmesan was a really fun day of work,” shares Read with a laugh. “We like the idea where the audience thinks one thing, which is this boy band stuff is just in the past and it’s a throwaway, it’s a reference to something from Cass’ youth that we’re not going to come back to. And then of course, that boy band song, which is so silly on the surface, becomes so profound for her as a character by the end of the season. So riding that line between absolute silliness and deep heartfelt storytelling is a huge part of the show for me.”
For Dennis, “it was hard to try to make sure she didn’t actually cry because it is sad to look down on someone that, ‘Oh, I care for this person. We were in this relationship for so long, but I have to confront him in this public space,’” she admits. Being backed by Giorgio (Josh Segarra) and Nat helped as well.
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“When you’re just not being taken seriously, it quells how you want to move forward in life. It’s like, ‘Oh, well, no one sees it as a real thing, so it’s just in my head.’ But when someone’s like, ‘Oh, we totally see that, we envision that with you, go for it,’ it feels different,” she explains. “For her, it was a very emotional time to go through that performance for the first time, opening herself up in a public space that way, facing the thing with Dusty.” That carries over into her asking her daughter Trina (Djouliet Amara) to not move in with her boyfriend Jacob (Sammy Fourlas). “Whether you look at that as her being a selfish mother or a mother really leaning into that mother-daughter relationship of support, I think it was just an interesting and a very emotional time for her.”
Looking Ahead to a Season 3
With where Season 2 leaves off, “there is an escalation of the intensity of what the machine is bringing to this town that feels really exciting,” Read says. “We go from these little cards with single words or phrases on them in Season 1 to these visions which are more like 32-bit retro video game technology in Season 2 to this third potential stage, which is beyond anything the characters could have imagined the machine would bring. And I think the psychological reckoning that that could lead to and the chaos and confusion create so many opportunities for drama and comedy.”
But how will the residents of Deerfield handle whatever coming next? O’Dowd agrees that Dusty could use Giorgio, who, after realizing his potential (thanks to the Morpho machine and Nat’s love), “is like a little Yoda helping everybody else out” in Season 2 but “he just doesn’t realize it yet.” Giorgio, for his part, will handle it “swimmingly,” says Segarra, adding that his and O’Dowd’s characters “need each other.”
Looking ahead, Maki hopes her character “feels less alone. Father Reuben has been sort of the sounding board for her, and she has Cass and she has some friends now. So I’m hoping that it’ll be cool to see her walk through these new questions but not be entirely alone and totally isolated.”
Dennis is excited for where Season 2 left Cass. “I’d really like to see her grow and stand on her own and feel a little more independent of other people, separating herself of just the title of a mom and of a wife or a daughter with this crazy relationship with her mother,” she shares.
As for that cliffhanger, “I’m excited, but I’m also very nervous,” Dennis admits. “I’m nervous for the people of Deerfield like, what does this mean? Because every time we get to the end of a season, there’s this new element of, ‘Aha!’”
What do you think the end of the finale means? Do you want to see a Season 3? Let us know in the comments section, below.
The Big Door Prize, Streaming Now, Apple TV+
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