‘Poker Face’ Boss Unpacks Charlie’s Heartbreaking Season 2 Finale, Shares Hopes for Potential Season 3

Note: This story contains spoilers from “Poker Face” Season 2, Episode 12.

Just as quickly as Natasha Lyonne’s Charlie Cale settled into the bustling metropolis of New York City in “Poker Face,” the Season 2 finale ripped away any shred of normalcy as Charlie headed back on the road again, fearing for her life even more than the first time.

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After settling into her Brooklyn crash pad (thanks to Steve Buscemi’s Good Buddy) and developing a friendship with a localnamed Alex (Patti Harrison), things were looking pretty good for Charlie — that is, until she found out she’s at the center of a plot from notorious assassin the Iguana to find and kill Beatrix Hasp (Rhea Perlman). Charlie and Alex thought they had evaded the Iguana, until Charlie realizes that her friend was actually Iguana all along, who had befriended Charlie so she could lead her to Hasp and kill her.

It turns out, Alex was the one person who could lie to Charlie without alarming her bulls–t detector — a realization that leaves Charlie “heartbroken” with “some real sorrow” as she hits the road after FBI Agent Luca Clark (Simon Helberg) told Charlie she’s now wanted by the FBI, according to showrunner Tony Tost.

“She connects with people, but … she finds it hard to find a home in the world [and] I think she really felt like she maybe found her place in Brooklyn, found someone who seemed uniquely well suited to be her friend,” Tost told TheWrap.

Tost added that Alex was someone Charlie could trust and she thought never lied to her, enabling Charlie to connect with Alex without feeling a lingering bulls–t alarm going off in the back of her head.

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“To have that pulled out from underneath her and to find out this is actually the one person who can lie to her, it leaves her in a little bit of a existentially unmoored, heartbroken spot,” Tost said, adding it was interesting “to see what was lurking underneath the kind of rye grin that we see Charlie usually have.”

Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale, Simon Helberg as Luca in “Poker Face” (Photo by: Ralph Bavaro/Peacock)

Charlie fights through the pain of the betrayal to get herself out of the grave situation, which ends with Alex flying down a cliff in Charlie’s Plymouth Barracuda while Charlie finds herself face-to-face with Luca, who gives her a head start to escape, but cautions her that the next time he sees her, he’ll have to arrest her. The conversation sparks an emotional response for Lyonne’s Charlie, which Tost said might’ve been colored by the show’s looming changes of securing another installment.

“She’ll bring whatever is going on that day in her life to the performance — sometimes there’ll be moments of vulnerability that aren’t written in, but then deepen in a scene,” Tost said. “That was one of the last days that we shot … You’re not guaranteed seasons forever. Is this her last scene with Luca? Is this her last scene as Charlie?”

Below, Tost unpacks that cliffhanger fakeout and honoring pre-prestige TV shows, and reveals Rian Johnson’s biggest word of guidance for the murder mystery series.

TheWrap: Why did you choose to kill of Hasp?

Tost: It felt like it’d be a death that would have some punch to it. It wasn’t originally the grand master plan, but as we were talking about this Alex character, [we discussed] what would justify the world’s greatest hit woman to come in? We’ve established this Hasp thing has still out there. She’s alive. We’ve established that she’s testifying events against powerful people. It grew in that way, as a way of justifying this Alex character being in our world. The added benefit is Rhea Perlman is inherently very likable, even when she’s scary. You don’t want to see her get killed; it ups the emotional stakes for Charlie and for the viewer.

Patti Harrison as Alex, Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale in “Poker Face” (Photo by: Ralph Bavaro/Peacock)

The finale has a great fakeout and literal cliffhanger before resolving the end. What was the inspiration behind that?

That was something that Rian [Johnson] and I talked about, and that we giggled about. There’s something about these ’80s shows where sometimes there’s almost this “The Dukes of Hazzard” thing where the car’s in the air and then a freeze frame and “to be continued next week.” We’ve been talking the whole season, before we knew what the serialized story, about maybe we do a two-parter story because that’s something that “Magnum P.I.” or “Rockford Files” did. It came from just our love of these weekly old school TV shows and some of the tropes and some of the go to moves, and how could we repurpose them and remix them and make them fresh for a new audience?

Before the turn of events, do you think that Charlie would have been content with living in Brooklyn and just staying there?

I have a feeling that probably, with that gift, and with this fact that there seems to be murders happening around her all the time, I think almost any location has a certain shelf life for Charlie. I could see her spending a season, if she didn’t have her cosmic nemesis cozying up to her, but probably not 20 years in the same apartment building.

Have you heard anything negative or positive about a potential Season 3? Would you want to come back and what do you see long-range for the show?

Whether or not there’s a Season 3 that’s really between the studio, Peacock, Rian, Natasha, and I’m kind of happily, hopefully, a good, hired hand to help out in it. But it’s really the Natasha-Rian show, so I think it starts there. And obviously it starts with whether MRC and Peacock see that there’s another season for them, and then the conversations go for there.

This season had a few more several-episode arcs but still a good dose of one-offs. Did that balance feel sufficient and would you want to achieve a similar balance in Season 3?

It’s really Rian’s brainchild. When we came in to start the writers’ room, I started off asking about Season 2, what the overall arc was, and he just told me, “don’t worry about it.” I had on the board, 201,202,203 just to map out — there’s 12 episodes, how do we fill it? He was like, actually, “could you take those cards down and when the writers come in here, just focus on one good mystery.” We were breaking those individual episodes before we even knew what the whole season would be … If there is a Season 3, again, I think it’s really Rian’s call.

We didn’t see much of Good Buddy, especially as Charlie became closer with Alex. Could he return in Season 3?

He could definitely come back. Charlie needs a friend, and it’d be nice to have someone that she could talk to, just to get what’s on her mind and heart out. A CB radio buddy, that you hear, but you never see — that just feels like a throwback to these 1980s shows that we love. There’s just something in this world of pre-prestige TV that’s kind of fun, so that was the conception of Good Buddy. Would we see him? Do we hear him more? I think all that’s on the table for future story.

What conversations do you guys have in the writers’ room about honoring past TV while being a streaming show looking at the current TV landscape?

It’s very much this mandate that starts with Rian that the last thing we should do is chase [and] try to replicate what other shows are doing well and not chase whatever the coolest, newest trends are. When we’re in the writers’ room, it’s very much like, “this is a case-of-the-week show.” We need to do certain things for it to feel like a “Poker Face” episode and that’s the driving element, and a lot of the inspiration are these pre “Sopranos” pre-prestige shows where — awards are nice, but we’re not aiming for, “this is our award-winning episode” — we just try not to repeat ourselves and then try to just what variations we can find on this kind of template or this kind of model of “Poker Face” we have, and of course, sometimes we can depart from too.

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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

“Poker Face” Seasons 1 and 2 are now streaming on Peacock.

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