Note: This story contains spoilers for “The ‘Burbs” Episode 8.
Keke Palmer’s Samira Fisher and her motley cul-de-sac crew are one step closer to catching the person haunting Hinkley Hills.
“The ‘Burbs” finale revealed that there is a greater force behind the mysterious disappearances, one who has tapped the garbage man to take the trash out when needed: the Home Owners’ Association.
Samira and Alison Grant (Erica Dasher), who was revealed to be alive halfway through the series, find themselves in a pickle when the garbage man Walters (Chad Lindberg) traps them inside the Victorian bunker. Walters was responsible for Allison’s husband Gary’s death, the bartender’s and the disappearance of a local high school teacher.
“I love keeping people on their toes and thinking that one person is going to be the bad guy,” creator and showrunner Celeste Hughey told TheWrap. “The reason why he was the killer — at least for this season — is I love the garbage man in the original movie. I think they’re so funny, and so I thought that would also be a little wink to the movie, making the garbage man a bigger part of the story.”
Samira uses her baby monitor to notify Rob (Jack Whitehall) that they were in danger. Rob and Naveen (Kapil Talwalkar) finally make it to the bunker after the two women fend off the garbage man from killing them both.
In the end it is Alison who lands the deadly kick to the garbage man’s head, but the trio lets her run off to evade the cops. Naveen takes the blame for his death but was not convicted by the local Hinkley Hills police.
The showrunner said TheWrap that she intentionally wanted the Allison twist to be revealed at the halfway point of the season, and for a larger murder mystery plot to unfold beyond her.
“The Allison twist was always something we wanted to do, but we wanted to make sure it wasn’t the entire length of the season, otherwise people would start to suspect something,” she said. “We wanted to have that reveal happen halfway through the season to kick start the latter half of the season’s mystery.”
With Allison’s help the trio and their nosy neighbors Lynn, Dana and Todd discover that there is someone targeting several outsiders in the town. Though Alison’s captor is now dead, Samira presumes that there still may be a larger force running this operation.
She theorizes that the group behind the town’s disappearances actively targets people they deem disruptive to the neighborhood’s social order, including rebellious teenage girls like Alison as well as unorthodox high school teachers who go against the status quo.
The Fishers conclude that Agnes and the HOA may be behind keeping up the “safest town in America” front of Hinkley Hills. But that reveal comes a little too late as their friend Naveen — the one taking the blame for the death of the HOA’s hitman — is on a date with the widowed secretary of the association.
Kate drugs Naveen and stuffs him in the trunk of her car, driving out of the neighborhood. Making him the next victim at the center of a potential Season 2.
“There is a larger conspiracy afoot. The HOA is involved, and we are figuring out who exactly is pulling the strings,” Hughey said. “Obviously, finding Naveen is the biggest important thing going into a potential second season, and then figuring out, really, what is going on in this town and who’s behind it.”
“I really feel like we have to have a Season 2,” Keke Palmer told TheWrap.
“When you think about a town like Hinkley Hills, where their main phrase is, it’s the safest town in America. There has to be a reason for that,” she added. “The uncovering, it can’t end here. We need to know more of what was the lie underneath that lie underneath that lie.”
Talwalkar told TheWrap that he has truly no clue if Naveen is alive or dead at the end of the first season. Hughey said she chose Naveen as the HOA’s next target because losing him would be “the most heartbreaking” outcome in the end.
“This could be the end or this could not,” Talwalkar said of his character’s fate. “This is a conversation I’ve had with people higher above me. You really don’t know.”
“Not lost forever,” Hughey teased. “Who knows, Season 2?”
All eight episodes of “The ‘Burbs” are available to stream on Peacock.
