Note: This article contains spoilers for “Cross” Season 2, Episode 8, titled “Quemar.”
“Cross” Season 2 has officially come to a close, leaving fans dangling off a major cliffhanger with Alex Cross’ (Aldis Hodige) decision to quit the force.
A lot went down in the finale. Alex took off running with a flash drive loaded with proof of Lance’s trafficking scheme after the FBI shared its plans to cover it up. This prompted Kayla (Alona Tal) to put out all the stops — including paying Alex’s ex-girlfriend Elle (Samantha Walkes) a visit — to find him. Ultimately, it’s Alex’s community that stands up to support him, and it’s Sen. Pete Ashford (Josh Peck) who helps bring justice to Lance when he backs out of supporting his Prosperity Seeds and airs out Lance’s crimes.
On the other side of Washington, D.C., Nana Mama (Juanita Jennings) apologizes to John Sampson (Isaiah Mustafa) for withholding information about his mother’s existence and shares his father’s contact information as an olive branch.
Last but certainly not least, the journey of vigilante Luz (Jeanine Mason) comes to an end…or does it?
After learning that her own aunt helped murder her mother, and her comrade Donnie (Wes Chatham) is killed, Luz continues to evade the police until she’s cornered at the Canadian Bridge. There, she jumps off to what seems like her death. But at the end of the episode, someone who appears to be Luz is walking alongside her community in Mexico as they hold a public funeral for Lance’s trafficking victims.
There’s a lot of questions that need to be answered, and we did the best to get them for you. Check out what the cast and the crew had to say about the Season 2 finale of “Cross.”
This interview has been edited and condensed for readability purposes. These interviews were conducted separately.
What’s next for Alex Cross now that he’s quit the force?
Hodge: I don’t even think about it as him quitting. I think it’s an intentional choice to step away from— there’s something broken he can’t fix, and he refuses to let it break him any further. And sometimes you just lose hope, you lose faith, so before you get to that point where you’ve exhausted who you are trying to fight a hill, a mountain that you cannot surpass, I think you got to figure out how to choose yourself. He’s making a choice for himself, self preservation. It’s resilience, and it’s, to a degree, an evolution.
Luz is alive at the end, right? Could we see her and Alex teaming up at some point now that he’s no longer on the force?
Watkins: Both of those things were not planned. I actually was going to have Luz die, and I was going to have Cross stay on the force. But it’s a perfect example of once a story starts to take on a life of its own. By the end of the season, that story was saying Cross would turn his badge in, and so I knew that was going to put me in a quandary going into Season 3. I said, “We got to roll the dice and have that happen,” because that was where it got to organically, storytelling-wise.
There’s a difference between justice and the law, and if the law is not upholding justice, and you are the law, then what does that make you?And when we go into Season 3, he’s going to still deal with that question because the institution is still there, but we also have to have a very compelling way to get him back. Because you know how it is with a hero; they take their cap off, but there’s always something that makes them put the cape back on, and that creates an opportunity for us.
Now, the last part of your question, will we see Luz again? She did live. She did live. I don’t know when, but there’s a reason we kept her alive.
Mason: Tell Ben, I’m in.
What does Alex Cross quitting look like in the books?
He has [quit] in the books earlier — five or six books back —he left for a while. He took up his practice as a psychiatrist. We’ll see in Season 3 where that all goes, but he does have a practice, and he’s a great shrink. I don’t know where it’s going to go yet, but that might be a possibility if we get another season.
Was Kayla and Alex’s romance real? Was it genuine?
Tal: “It’s genuine; that’s why it’s dangerous. There’s a genuine kinship and care that she has for him. She has a goal in her life and she’s trying to achieve that goal. She obviously has to collaborate with him again, even though she knows that credit will be given to him because he’s more charismatic, people like to hate on women – I don’t know what it is. Then she starts to feel for him, because he’s a genuine person.
She tries to shut it down and say, “No, we were bound to happen. It doesn’t matter.” But she does feel [for him], and then he’s given lead [on the case], it’s taken away from her and he doesn’t fight it. And it’s sad; it’s a sad moment, because she’s like, she doesn’t want to be angry with him, she doesn’t want to give him that whole like, “Yes, boss, whatever,” but he didn’t defend her. He did what they all do. For her, it’s just like you’re like the rest of them.
Hodge: No, to be honest with you, I feel like…not that they weren’t real. I think for Cross, [he] found an area to pull his grief from and found something that felt similar. He found something that felt like…a little bit of solace. This is an area of comfort right now while I’m grieving potentially the loss of the love of my life. And the thing is: That’s real work. People go through that all the time in real life. I think up to that point, he had a great deal of reverence and respect for Kayla. I think that their friendship matured for him into something that felt like a safe home while he was grieving, and then obviously it went how it went. He learned a lesson.
Nana Mama gives John Sampson his biological father’s contact information. What’s the next step for him in this journey?
What I believe the next step would be in a fictitious scenario, because I can’t confirm anything, but digging into that. You got to dig into that and take it further. Because now he knows the situation with his mother, he knows where she stands, now he’s looking for that one buoy out there, that one pillar that he can go and try to like, all right, maybe that didn’t work out, but let me go try this. This might work out, but he has a different approach now, because he, you know, he’s a little tentative because he just dealt with that situation. So he’s like, “All right, let me go in a little bit more guarded.” That’s what I’m thinking in my head.
Why did Lance think he’d actually get away with this? What made him so sure?
Lillard: The audacity of success, right? That really emboldens the best and the worst of you. Here’s the man who thinks he’s going to solve world hunger by any means necessary. And there’s a righteousness that comes with that success that gives you this bravado that at the end of the day can be used for good or for bad, and we see it played in America today, or oligarchies all over the world.
One of the great things about this year is that Ben Watkins and his team of writers had a crystal ball three years ago and what they wrote about is relevant today.
What ultimately makes Sen. Pete Ashford turn Lance in?
Peck: I think that as adults, and as you get older, you hit these moments where you really have to choose the person that you want to be. And also, what you believe the bigger truth is in this world, and it’s almost always the harder path. It’s almost always the path that serves others and not yourself, and it’s the thing you can do to allow yourself to sleep at night. So I think a guy like a Sen. Ashford could have easily gone the other direction and quieted his conscience with fame and power, and all the things people do to quiet down that little voice telling them what’s really right. Thankfully for all of us, he chose that voice.
Ben, we’re introduced to your character Roy this season. What made you join the show, and will we see you in future seasons?
Watkins: We’re in the writer’s room breaking scenes, and we’ve got this character, Roy, and as we start to audition Roys, we hadn’t found the right one yet. One of my co-showrunners said, “Hey, why don’t you play Roy?” Because they know I’m an actor. They’ve seen my stuff. At first we all in the room chuckled, [but then he] was serious. Then I was serious. Not only did I get a chance to play in the sandbox that has always been a place that I love, but I also got to do it with these cast mates who have become great friends and family for me right now. And it was a little intimidating, but they all took good care of me. It was a blast to do that.
We’re going to see a little bit more of me, but we’re already trying to figure out who kills Roy. We’re thinking about a good death scene for Roy. We’ll figure out if that happens in Season 3
James, would you make an appearance in the show?
Patterson: There’s no need for some old guy in it.
What if Ben asked you?
Patterson: “Yeah, sure. Yeah, I would do it. Of course.”
James, what are your thoughts on how timely the show is as it relates to the Jeffrey Epstein files?
I don’t know about predicting as much as dealing with stuff that has been happening for a long time and drawing attention to it. You don’t have to get into paranoid fantasies about what’s going on. There’s just real stuff that happens and it’s been happening, in terms of relationships between the United States and Mexico, for a while, just bad things. The first season dealt with the realities of Washington, D.C. much more so than the books. Alex is a lot more conflicted. He’s more realistic as a detective in Washington. And I think Season 2, once again, it’s very realistic about some of the problems going on in the world, [as well as] some of the problems that Americans have to face up to.
I always say, don’t get up on a soapbox, just let the story do it. Don’t preach to people. People don’t like to be preached to. Just tell the story and let the story do the work.
