Note: this article contains spoilers for Season 4 of “Bel-Air” Episodes 1 and 2.
“Bel-Air” showrunner Carla Banks-Waddles unpacked that massive money laundering request Geoffrey (Jimmy Akingbola) makes to Uncle Phil (Adrian Holmes) in Episode 1, saying it was fun to explore the cracks in the longtime brothers’ friendship.
“It was a huge ask, especially for someone like Phil who is the clean-cut lawyer, family man, to have this ask from his brother and seeing those worlds collide,” Banks-Waddles told TheWrap.
In Episode 1, after stepping away from the Banks family for some time, Geoffrey finally reappears with an injured arm and some weight on his shoulders after rescuing Will from being kidnapped by his old organization. He then explains to Phil that after a run-in with his past criminal colleagues, the only way he can pay off a debt he owes is by washing a “significant sum of money” for his organization, and the ideal place to do that is through the businesses Phil secures for his Legacy Heights construction project.
“They made it very clear, the way to pay off my debt is by serving my time. It’s the only way,” Geoffrey tells Phil in the episode.
Just when Phil was on the right track to building up his community, here comes Geoffrey with a nearly impossible request to fulfill.
“Geoffrey’s world has always been so separate from The Banks family and his past has not come really home to them, and to see that come home in this final season just felt like it was good to see that collide and fracture of that brotherhood a little bit,” Banks-Waddles explained. “And also the fracture of the sister-brother relationship between he and Viv, because they are so close. They’ve always been supportive of each other.”
She continued: “So to see those cracks and that questioning of, ‘Can we trust this, Geoffrey? We don’t know,’ felt a little fun. People like a little gangster on ‘Bel-Air,’ and Geoffrey brings a little gangster to the show, but to see that world come to Uncle Phil and how he handles it just felt like a dynamic we hadn’t seen that that was going to be a lot of fun.”
After four seasons, “Bel-Air” is officially wrapping up, a moment Banks-Waddles said is “bittersweet.”
“Bittersweet, because we are closing it out, but also it feels good to know that this was the fourth and final season, because we do get to tell all the stories that we’ve been wanting to tell, and go out leaving nothing that feels like we didn’t get a chance to do that,” she explained. “It feels like we got to tell all the stories and talk to all the cast about what is it about your character that you haven’t done yet, or you haven’t said that you would like to do. So just being able to bring all of that into the writers room and say, ‘OK, we got eight episodes, where [and] how do we get there, how do we land the plane,’ in a satisfying way for all of these characters and all of these storylines that we’ve been telling.”
“Bel-Air” Season 4, Episodes 1 through 3 are now streaming on Peacock.
