'Mare of Easttown' Creator Explains Attic Moment
Warning: spoilers for Mare of Easttown Season 1 are ahead. If you haven't watched the season finale, please turn around and check back in once you have!
Despite the season finale of Mare of Easttown being best described as devastating, the show ended on a hopeful note. Lori seemingly forgives Mare for arresting her son, Siobhan goes to college, Frank and Mare seem to be functioning as a happy blended family, and Mare retains custody of her grandson. And in the last moments of the show, we see Mare take a huge step in her own healing and enter her attic—where her late son Kevin's body was found.
Creator Brad Ingelsby explained the decision to Variety, and stressed that it was important to get Mare to a place of healing so the scene wasn't misinterpreted.
"It’s actually something that we talked about in the edit," Brad told Variety. "We had to ask the question to ourselves and we had to pick the right piece of music, which I think helps because it’s more hopeful. There were a couple versions where the music was a little melancholy. Ultimately we trust an audience to think Mare’s in a good place. She’s had this conversation with the therapist who asked, 'Are you ready to confront what’s been haunting you?' With her saying goodbye to Siobhan, having a good relationship with Frank and Faye, [being] back on the force, we’d given her enough wins so that when you get to that place at the end, you’re like, 'OK, now she’s going to go up there and this is about confronting the thing that’s been haunting her.' I think it was, “How do you have enough of healing moments where you know Mare has arrived at that next level of healing in her own life?”
Of course, this ending does open the show up to a potential second season. But while there are no plans at this time, Brad says he has an idea of where Mare's going from here:
"I’d always envisioned Mare, after the credits roll, back to work and she’s not so cavalier about the position. That’s what we always intended those slaps to be; when Mrs. Zabel slaps her it’s like, 'Wake up, you can’t go through life being so cavalier about things. Yeah, you saved the girl, but my son is dead.' So, I always envisioned Mare has gone back to work with a renewed purpose and a commitment to doing things the right way. And also, the thing that I admire about Mare is that I feel like she has been the person to shoulder the burdens, anxieties and fears of the community and that she’s a person that everyone looks to because she’s got the strength to do it. There’s a resilience about her that I think is really admirable, so I could see her going back to work the next day being like, 'I’m going to shoulder the anxieties and fears of this community again because I can do it.' And that to me is at the core of Mare: she is this person in the community that is just as messed up as everybody else, but also has this incredible ability to just keep going in life in a way that people look to in times of need and trauma and disappointment."
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