Tonight’s Season 2 finale of The Irrational brought the action, drama, and cliffhangers, and showrunner Arika Lisanne Mittman broke it down with PopCulture.com.
In “The Exchange,” “When Alec is recruited to assist with a multi-national prisoner exchange that has gone awry, he sees an opportunity to rescue a wrongfully imprisoned colleague. The case pulls Alec and Rose into the dangerous world of international espionage.”
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The case involved Rose’s husband, Logan, played by Nick Sager, and although it was revealed that it was only for an undercover assignment for MI6, there was still some tension between Rose and Alec. Mittman shared that they always knew Rose was going to have a husband, with the goal to possibly shake up Rose and Alec’s relationship for a little longer. But what came in Season 2 was better than she hoped for because of where everyone was at in their relationships.
“What I really loved doing in Season 2 was taking Alec, Marisa, and Rose and having the real world, where real people are friends with their exes. Real people can sometimes even be friends with their ex’s girlfriend,” Mittman said. “And so I wanted to tell a story where Rose and Marisa could develop their own relationship and friendship and where Alec and Marisa could become coworkers in a way and work and team up for cases. And what really worked about their relationship is they work well together even though they’re no longer a couple and that Rose and Alec could have this very adult dynamic. And that being said, for Alec, we didn’t want him to be insecure about the relationship between him and Rose.”
“We could clearly see that this is something from her past,” she continued. “This is not somebody that she’s maybe looking to get back together with or anything like that. But I think there’s some discomfort with the fact that she kept this from him. And the fact that she kept a secret and a piece of her life a secret. And I think from Rose’s perspective, part of it, she couches it in like, ‘Well, it was part of my spy life, and it fit in my little spy box over there. And I didn’t think I was ever going to see him again, so it wasn’t really relevant.’ I said this to Karen [David] at the time, I think part of the reason that she might not have even acknowledged was that Alec takes marriage very, very seriously. He took his marriage to Marisa very, very seriously, and it took him a whole season to get over the divorce, really.”
“And I think part of her did not want Alec to know that she had entered into marriage so casually and capriciously and for cases and literally wasn’t even legally married to this guy and didn’t even care about that enough to have a tough, loving conversation that the marriage was that meaningless to her,” Mittman explained. “And I think over the time that her relationship with Alec developed, I think a part of her didn’t want him to know because she would want him to know that if she and Alec were ever to go down that road, that it would not be the same thing at all, and that she wouldn’t take it very, very seriously. And so that was all my thoughts about the character and the marriage. But I think that it also shows a lot about these characters that despite all of those actually uncomfortable dynamics, they work together to call the case. That’s what is fair.”
Meanwhile, the episode was an intense one that saw much action and Logan nearly dying, but luckily, it all worked out in the end. And, many of the characters got happy endings, including Alec. After scheduling a procedure to get rid of his scars, he decided against it at the end of the episode, telling Rose that the scars are a part of him. It came after Alec had been grappling “with the journey of dealing with his scars” all season.
“We spent the first season dealing with the mystery of the scars,” Mittman explained. “How did it all happen? And now that he’s kind of been able to move forward from that, it was like, what is the rest of his life gonna look like now? And I think he started the season getting this unexpected, ‘You know, you could get rid of your scars.’ He hadn’t entertained that notion. And he didn’t want it to be just a straight-line journey. And so, by Episode 6, it looks like, ‘I’m not gonna do that.’ And then he has this moment where he realizes, as he’s entering this new relationship with Rose and things are getting more serious between them, he has this sort of discomfort with his body.”
“And I don’t think we show that enough in stories about men, that he is a man, he’s a very secure man, but he’s got this discomfort with how he looks,” she continued. “And so, even though Rose says, ‘No, it’s fine. I don’t care about that,’ I think that’s real. But he starts to realize he’s got a problem. And so he does reentertain the notion, and ‘Maybe I’m gonna do it.’ And he talks about it with his dad, and him being vulnerable in front of his dad is a big deal for him, and that alone is a step. And then, by the end of the season, comes to this conclusion of, ‘The scars are how I got here, and I don’t wanna erase that. I don’t wanna erase that part of me. I like having the marks of how I got here.’ And so, I think I really enjoyed getting to tell that story for him.”
The finale also saw Marisa moving on from the trauma she experienced from when Jace was killed. She ends up moving out of her house in favor of a fresh start, and Maahra Hill actually asked Arika Lisanne Mittman if Marisa is still going to be living at the house after all that had happened. However, it didn’t seem like it would work out due to “practicalities were that was the set we have,” she explained.
“It was like, ‘Yes, she’s gonna deal with it,’ but it stayed with me, and it was in the back of my mind,” Mittman said. “You know what would be a good journey for Marisa is letting go of her past and letting go of this house where her boyfriend got murdered. Not only that, the house that she built, a marriage, and a life with Alec that she’s now moved past. It really seemed like a great journey for Marisa, going from staying in that house where her boyfriend died, that this sort of symbolically moving past her marriage, moving past that horrible event was to move on from that house. And so Maahra and I were both really excited to tell that story.”
As for Rose, it’s no secret that she’s been through a lot this season, as Season 2 kicked off with her being kidnapped. But then it ends with her divorcing Logan and even opening up her own agency, but it’s all part of this “terrible” and “traumatic” journey for her that’s as vital as ever.
“It’s also really connecting Rose and Alec to each other,” Mittman shared. “And what is her reaction to that? She bolts. The first thing she does, she leaves. She goes back to kind of her sort of spy-ish world. And then, over the course of the season, she and Alec get closer and closer. They have their bumps. They move past things. And at the end of the season, we kind of always knew that the landing point is gonna be she stays.”
“And that was the story arc that we wanna tell,” she continued. “She has that very pivotal moment where she decides where it’s like, ‘Am I gonna save Logan’s life, or am I gonna go chase the case and the mission?’ And she decides, ‘No. I’m going to be human, and I’m gonna save a person’s life.’ And that’s directly from her experience all season with Alec. And it’s kind of like who she is now is not a spy anymore. Who she is now is this person, a different person who is maybe more herself than she’s ever been, and she wants to stay here with Alec.”
Even though the episode ended on a mostly good note, it did end on a bit of a cliffhanger. After Rose showed off her agency to Alec, Alec got a text message from an unknown number with pictures of himself. Someone’s been watching him, and there’s no telling who it could be. Unfortunately, as of now, The Irrational has not yet been renewed for Season 3 and is still one of many NBC shows in danger of cancellation. When NBC could possibly reveal the show’s fate is unknown, but one can only hope that it’s soon and that it’s good news.