Furious Creator Breaks Down the Season 1 Finale and Teases What's Next for Alice

Warning: this article contains spoilers for the season 1 finale of "Furious."

For most of its first season, "Furious" let you believe Alice Black was the one being hunted. The finale, "Hart Island," quietly flips that: Alice catches Catherine Grace, brings her to Jay Easton's home, and then — while the two women are in the same house — cuts Jay's oxygen supply. Catherine suspects immediately. Alice smiles. Cut to black.

"I wanted the last image of the season to be the audience realizing they'd been rooting for someone they don't actually know," creator Liz Meriwether tells EW. "Everything Alice does in that house is a choice. She isn't cornered. She's deciding."

Meriwether says the oxygen beat was in the plan early, but the smile arrived late. "There was a version where she looks horrified at herself, and it played as guilt. Guilt lets the audience off the hook. The smile doesn't." It also reframes Catherine, who spends the season being told she's paranoid: in the final minute she is the only person in the room who has read Alice correctly.

That leaves season 2 with a very specific problem to solve, and Meriwether is happy about it. "Now Catherine knows something she can't prove, and Alice knows Catherine knows. That's not a mystery anymore, it's a standoff." She's careful not to promise a courtroom or a confession — the show, she notes, has never been interested in resolution as much as in pressure.

Hulu renewed "Furious" for a second season days before the finale dropped, which means the cliffhanger was written with a runway. "We didn't have to be coy about whether we'd get to answer it," Meriwether says. "So we let the ending be as ugly as it wanted to be."

Season 1 of "Furious" is streaming now on Hulu.