Note: The following story contains spoilers from “Nobody Wants This” Season 2, Episode 10.
By the “Nobody Wants This” Season 2 finale, Kristen Bell’s Joanne and Adam Brody’s Noah are at a standstill: Joanne still isn’t ready to convert to Judaism and Noah isn’t willing to commit to living together or any other relationship milestones until she commits.
After an elevator ride full of awkward silence, the couple agrees to put on a happy face during Morgan’s engagement party, but that quickly falls to the wayside further into the night, when Noah breaks it off with Joanne, telling her he’s accepting the truth of their situation. With Esther also taking a step back from her marriage with Sasha while Morgan ends it with Dr. Andy, the latter half of Season 2 ups the stakes for almost all of the characters in a way creator Erin Foster found necessary for the rom-com series to keep evolving.
“In Season 1, you’re sort of testing things out, [and] once we were able to see how people reacted to the show, Season 2 did give us a chance to go deeper and take more risks with exposing more about who these people are, and show them be more vulnerable and just push the boundaries,” Erin Foster said.
“There’s a lot of play,” EP Sara Foster added. “There’s a lot of outside elements that don’t make this relationship easy, so it’s not just like a cutesy, buttoned-up situation.”
Fresh off the breakup and several glasses of wine, Joanne finds Esther in the ladies’ room and confides in her, telling her all the Jewish traditions she’ll miss now that she and Noah are done, leading Esther to help Joanne realize maybe she is ready to convert.
“Sometimes we make a bigger thing out of something than it needs to be. You expect something to feel differently,” Erin Foster told TheWrap. “She realizes that she actually really is Jewish, in her heart and in her soul and it’s a feeling of belonging.”
“As with any big life change, it’s going to feel awkward because you haven’t mastered it yet,” Bell told TheWrap. “Joanne is just such an authentic person. She wants to make sure that if she decides to convert that she’s not doing it to please the relationship, that she’s doing it because she genuinely feels that it’s something she wants to explore.”
Reinvigorated from her chat with Esther, Joanne makes a mad dash around the Academy Museum (where Morgan’s party is being held) in an effort to find Noah and make things right.
“She cannot deny, not just the chemistry, but the safety and possibility she feels with this man and the type of person he is,” Bell said. “Sometimes when you grow up, you realize you need what you don’t have — you don’t need someone who’s exactly like you. You actually need someone with opposing characteristics so that there’s balance … it’s no mystery to me why she keeps running back to Noah.”
Little does Joanne know that Noah is also running back to her, now feeling confident that it’s okay if Joanne doesn’t convert after all. “He’s seen what that would look like with and without conversion, and he’s saying, ‘That’s good enough for me. That’s what matters,’” Brody said. “It seems like he has said, ‘I’ve taken that off the table — doesn’t matter.’”
By the time the pair link up outside of the Urban Light installment, Noah tells Joanne he chooses her every time, to which Joanne responds, “you’re in luck” before the pair reunite with a romantic kiss that Erin Foster said intentionally mirrored the Season 1 finale, which saw Noah running after Joanne and surprising her.
“It’s a lot of pressure off that first kiss in Season 1 to live up to it, but their chemistry doesn’t change — It’s always there,” Erin Foster said. “It’s a big focus for us and for the network to make the finale feel big and romantic and surprising and sweeping and come up with unique ways to get them to end up together and to not see it coming.”
While “Nobody Wants This” has yet to receive the Season 3 green light from Netflix, Sara Foster joked there would be “a lot of picketing if there wasn’t a Season 3.”
“Netflix is probably waiting to see what the reaction is Season 2, but I’m ready to start writing season three, if they’re ready to give me a green light,” Erin Foster said. “I think it’s clear that if there’s a Season 3, then [Joanne] will be on her journey converting.”
That journey, Bell noted, will be filled with bumps ahead for Joanne. “Change is rocky — change doesn’t feel good because it’s change,” Bell said, who noted Season 2 doesn’t end with “any sort of definitive point of view from Joanne.” “You’re not settled in it — it’s not supposed to feel settled. I think it’s going to be rocky for a while, even if she moves forward.”
While Erin Foster admitted that Season 2 felt “a little tricky” due to the mounting obstacles for the couples, she noted that writing a Season 3 would be quite fun “now that we’re past those hurdles,” saying “they can be off to the races as a couple.”
“People want to see new couples coexisting and learning how to make it work, and that’s not quick — that’s a slow burn,” Sara Foster said. “That’s how Erin writes — Erin loves a slow burn.”
Bell echoed Erin Foster’s sentiments, noting “Nobody Wants This” has “the deepest well to choose from,” saying “this is a show where it’s shocking how limitless the storylines are.”
“When they’re taking themselves from me to a we, there’s so much involved,” Bell said. “Conversion is almost a backdrop to everything else. How do they do it? Are they going to cohabitate? How do they blend their friends and their families? How do you get over all of these little power struggles you have when you’re with someone that you’re trying to maintain a connection with, and what kind of power struggles do you allow to threaten your identity and what don’t you like? There’s so many questions, and when you have a lot of questions, it means you’re going to have a lot of writing opportunities.”
Erin Foster revealed that in an ideal world, “Nobody Wants This” would run for five seasons, noting that the “dream” end for Joanne and Noah is marriage and kids.
“I really do try not to get too far ahead of myself, so I try to just to think about what’s right in front of me, but … I would love them to end up together and married with kids and all the things,” Erin Foster said. “That would be the dream trajectory for them.”
“Nobody Wants This” Season 2 is now streaming on Netflix.
