(This post contains spoilers through Episode 106 of “Love Life” — but not for the final four of the season, which launched Thursday.)
After multiple heartbreaks, Darby Carter (Anna Kendrick) will finally get her happy ending on the Season 1 finale of HBO Max’s comedy anthology “Love Life.”
But what makes for a happy ending for our heroine might surprise you, because the identity of her “person” isn’t actually the most important part of Darby’s story, according to showrunners Sam Boyd and Bridget Bedard.
“It’s funny ’cause from the beginning of writing the show, we always felt like with a story like this, you are obviously building up to who she is going to end up with,” Boyd, who created the series, told TheWrap. “And the more we developed the story, the more it just became about her journey and her growth and when we would come back to that question, before we knew the answer, of who is she going to end up with, because we do want this story to satisfy and show Darby’s romantic fulfillment. But when we kept coming back to that, we still had this idea of Darby needing to crack herself open first.”
Bedard added: “The puzzle of the season really is how do the pieces have to come together in order for her to feel whole enough or ready enough to accept ‘the person’ into her life in the right way. So I guess in the backhalf, it is a mashup of people we’ve seen — and someone we haven’t.”
Now, we don’t know what Bridget means there, but we do know Darby’s previous suitors include Augie Jeong (Jin Ha), Bradley Field (Scoot McNairy), Danny Two Phones (Gus Halper), Magnus Lund (Nick Thune), and both old and young Luke Ducharme (adult version played by John Gallagher Jr). So the final four episodes of “Love Life” Season 1 — which launched Thursday on HBO Max — might incorporate any of them, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that any of them are Darby’s “person.”
“We are really proud of the ending, we think it will satisfy the audience but will also surprise them and it will involve all of that,” Boyd said. “It will involved romantic fulfillment, it will involve people we’ve seen before, it will involve people we haven’t and, of course, what we felt was the proper conclusion to Darby’s story.”
“Love Life” has not yet been renewed for Season 2 at HBO Max, but Boyd, Bedard and executive producer Paul Feig are already working on ideas to surround a new protagonist, as the plan for the series was always to follow a fresh character each season.
Check back with TheWrap tomorrow, after you’ve finished “Love Life,” for a spoiler-filled post-mortem interview with Boyd and Bedard.
“Love Life” Episodes 107-110 are streaming now on HBO Max.
