(Spoiler alert: Do not read ahead unless you have seen Thursday’s season finale of “Will & Grace.)
“Will & Grace” just aired its second Season 1 finale. Wait, it’s clear we’re referencing the final episode of the freshman installment of NBC’s revival, right? OK, good.
Thursday’s season-closer ended with a real jaw-dropper: Will’s (Eric McCormack) mother and Grace’s (Debra Messing) father hooked up and announced they are getting married, all in one episode. Which means the two BFFs are about to become brother and sister. Yeah. Ew.
Oh, and Jack (Sean Hayes) got engaged to his new boyfriend he literally just met on a trip to Ibiza, Spain, while Karen (Megan Mullally) ended her long-running affair with her lover (Alec Baldwin) to put her marriage first.
But TheWrap decided to focus on the Will and Grace ick factor here in particular when asking Max Mutchnick and David Kohan — the co-creators and showrunners of NBC’s old/new hit — about the cliffhanger for “It’s a Family Affair.” (Yes, that was the actual name of this episode.)
“The idea was that they had both sort of come to this point in their lives where they were very sanguine about where they were and what their life was,” Kohan said. “And Grace had made her peace about being single, being content with her lot. And Will recognized the folly of trying to really quickly rush into a relationship under the wire. And they had both gotten to the point where, ‘Hey things are good.’ And then suddenly circumstances conspire to show them maybe they shouldn’t be so sure of themselves.”
Those circumstances are Grace’s widower father Martin Adler (Robert Klein) and Will’s widow mother Marilyn Truman (Blythe Danner) making with a very fast engagement soon after sleeping together for the first time. And they actually say they are tying the knot because they don’t want to end up like their children, who are co-dependent and alone. Ouch.
So Will and Grace are left with the awkward realization that, not only will they become siblings, but the choices they have made are what led their parents to this decision.
“They are accused of being too incestuous,” Kohan said. “And what happens now that they are literally incestuous? That’s the big question we land on.”
A question they have plenty of time to answer.
“Will & Grace” was picked up for Season 2 before the revival premiered at the start of the 2017-2018 TV season, and the Peacock recently granted it a third season and upped the episode count for the sophomore installment.
But just because Kohan and Mutchnick have been given a long timeline to work with, that doesn’t mean they are filling it out.
“Things happen during the course of a season that I mean, yeah we might have an idea or we might have in the back of our minds something that we want two years down the road,” Kohan said. “But we also know that things happen during the course of a season. Relationships are made or moments sort of coalesce around something that we didn’t foresee, that move the show in a different direction. So to be married to a certain way to go or a certain way to end it — it’s written in pencil.”
“One of the things that we’re so lucky to have on the show is a room full of very brilliant writers that we collaborate with every week,” Mutchnick added. “And so getting all of those opinions in when story camp starts is going to pave the way to the first episode of Season 2 — or 10, depending on what you want to call it.”
Kohan said they have a “few things” in the works now, but “everything is on the table.” “Because any place that you land is viable if you get it there authentically and if you get it there entertainingly,” he added. “So where we want to end up is up for debate.”
“If we get through it one year at a time, it’s better that way,” Mutchnick added. “And what Season 3 gives us is almost an emotional cushion.”