Two words that come to mind regarding the Season 2 finale of “Ginny & Georgia” are “shotgun” and “wedding,” but not in the way you might think.
Just as Georgia (Brianne Howey) marries Wellsbury Mayor Paul Randolph (Scott Porter) in the Cinderella-esque wedding of her dreams, Detective Gabriel Cordova (Alex Mallari Jr.) crashes the ceremony to arrest Georgia for the murder of Tom Fuller, whom she did, in fact, smother with a pillow. Season 2 ends with Georgia getting taken away in a cop car and her son Austin (Diesel La Torraca) chasing after her in tears.
“As heartbreaking as it was, I love the ending because again, life is contrast, life is joy and tragedy and nothing in life gets wrapped up in a perfect bow. So why would the Season 2 finale of ‘Ginny & Georgia’?” Howey says in an interview with TheWrap.
How Season 2 Led Up to This Ending
Georgia and Paul’s wedding happens despite many obstacles, mainly the arrival of Georgia’s ex and Austin’s father Gil Timmins (Aaron Ashmore), a violent man who Georgia framed for embezzlement (which he was already doing) to escape his abuse. Gil threatens to bring all of Georgia’s other skeletons out of the closet if she won’t let him continue to see Austin and give him money from her marriage to Paul, who comes from a wealthy family.
Gil finally pushes things too far in his continued stalking, harassment and blackmailing of Georgia. He knows Georgia murdered not just one of her ex-husbands, Kenny Drexel (Darryl Scheelar), but actually two, because she accidentally gave her first husband Anthony Greene too heavy a dose of a drug that killed him.
When Gil forcefully enters Georgia’s house and threatens her, Austin finds a gun and shoots his father in the arm to protect his mother. Georgia then comes clean to her fiancé Paul about her secret past, but he still decides to follow through and marry her.
“We always knew that Gil coming and [Georgia] being arrested during her first dance [with] Paul, that was always the plan as far back as when we were pitching Netflix. The beauty about the writers room is that so much else gets to change. You have these big tentpoles like okay guys, here’s where we’re going. And then you get to fill it in with all this wonderful complexity,” creator Sarah Lampert told TheWrap. “So when Gil came to town, we knew that Georgia didn’t want Gil around and we knew that Georgia framed Gil for embezzlement. And those were the only two things we knew about this character. So then it became, ‘Who was he going to be?’ We thought it was really important to show that even a woman as strong and as powerful and as no-nonsense as Georgia can be a victim of domestic violence.”
Detective Cordova arrests Georgia after getting a tip from Nick (Dan Beirne) that she was present at the time of Tom’s death. Georgia smothered Tom after his wife Cynthia confessed she wants the responsibility of taking care of him to end. Georgia believes that by killing Tom, Cynthia will be relieved of that burden. Lampert says the smothering scene points to the complexity of Georgia as a character — and how audiences feel about her morally ambiguous actions.
“It should change, it should absolutely change. You can love them one minute and hate them the next. That’s messy. That’s real life. That’s what I’m interested in exploring,” she said of viewers receiving the show’s moral gray areas. “I don’t want characters who always say the right thing or do the right thing. I want characters that act out of emotion and then have to deal with the repercussions of that and then mess up all over again in new interesting dynamic ways.”
What’s In Store for Ginny and Georgia in Season 3 and Beyond
When showrunner Debra J. Fisher and Lampert pitched Netflix, they planned for the show to run for four-seasons.
“We did always know where we wanted to end this season. When Sarah [Lampert] and I went in together to pitch to Netflix, we pitched four seasons, and knock on all the wood,” said showrunner Debra J Fisher. “We know where Season 3 begins and ends and we know the end game.”
Despite introducing romantic relationships, Fisher emphasizes that the show hinges on the mother-daughter bond between Ginny and Georgia.
“This whole season we’ve been bringing Ginny and Georgia back together. And so Ginny, Georgia and Austin — the three of them — are now a unit. They’ve gotten past the murdering. They’re together. Ginny’s so helpful in making this wedding happen, they’re united against Gil, and then again, at the very end we tear them apart,” Fisher said. “We love telling these layered stories and it’s the best part about doing a drama where you have all these balances. As soon as you get them together, here comes something else down the road that’s going to tear them apart, and that’s one of the dimensions and how our show is so layered. It just works in such a beautiful way. I love the way the season ends.”
