Warning: the following contains spoilers for Superstoreend of the series on March 25.
Thursdays Superstore finale can best be described as bittersweet. Because, although Cloud 9 went bankrupt – Zephra decided to convert most of the Cloud 9s into distribution centers and make the retail giant an online-only network – the comedy in the workplace managed to end on an uplifting note, showing where all the employees (well, majority employees) disembarked after the closing of Store 1217:
* Amy left her corporate job at Zephra and got another executive job. Her future husband Jonas (!) Ended up running for the city council. After they were married, they had a son: a son named Carter. (To learn more about the ending to the # Simmosa fairy tale, click here.)
* Dina was hired to manage the Ozark Highlands distribution center. She accepted Sandra as her assistant manager and hired Marcus and Justine as warehouse workers. Meanwhile, Dina and Garrett decided to continue dating after the store closed. (“Hang and knock” totally means that they are official, right?)
* Glenn reopened Sturgis & Sons with Jerusha’s blessing and hired Cheyenne and Mateo to work with him. A photo of the late and beloved Murta was hanging behind the cash register.
* Everyone remained friends and eventually gathered at Glenn and Jerusha’s house for a picnic. If you were watching closely, you saw Mateo and Eric displaying their wedding rings to Bo and Cheyenne.
In separate interviews, TVLine spoke with series star / producer Ben Feldman, as well as executive producers / co-hosts Jonathan Green and Gabe Miller, about the time jump at the end of the series and what comes next: Bo and Cheyenne spin off? A complete revival? Read on to find out…
TVLINE | Where did the idea of flash-forwarding come from? And why did it seem necessary here?
MILLER | We must say that the idea for this sequence came from [series creator] Justin Spitzer, to do this with an ad by Garrett. I think it was a way of [strike] one [tonal] Balance. We were allowed to have a more realistic and less optimistic ending to the store, but it gave the feeling that things would be okay for these people. To do this all together in the same episode, we needed to play around with it a little bit, which the series never did. It made him special.
TVLINE | Ben, what did you think when you saw the flash-forward mounted for the first time?
FELDMAN | Gosh, I loved this montage. Ruben Fleischer did an incredible job directing that. What was really cool about it was how exciting it was, because we didn’t really feel much emotion on this show. We take a few steps back; we almost got to the roots, so we turned and left. And I think it was won after six seasons. Almost Six Feet UnderThe level flash-forward was achieved at the end of the show and it was very important. You wanted to see the closure. You wanted to see these people happy, who changed and found some kind of sense of place and community. For some characters, this meant staying on the same path as before. That’s where they were happy. And for other characters, like Jonah, it was rising to a level that he had always hesitated or feared over the course of the six seasons. There were a million different cuts from that, as the notes came and went. I watched many different versions of [it], and [there was] none that i could put on with a face i would be happy if strangers saw in the end.
TVLINE | Aside from the end of Amy and Jonah’s fairy tale, was there a moment at the end that really struck an emotional chord with any of you?
MILLER | The final moment of Dina and Glenn, where Glenn kind of takes the reins out of the store, and they have a little … not detente, but an acknowledgment of their relationship over the years. I found it very cute.
GREEN | Glenn hiring Mateo was another.
FELDMAN | Glenn’s stuff in general. The writers sent me wide strokes of [the finale] a long time ago. When they mentioned that they saw Glenn at Sturgis & Sons, I started to describe it to my wife, [and] she just looked at me and said, “Do you need me to hold you now? Are you okay?” [Laughs] And when Glenn and Dina are there at the store, and Glenn is saying, “Take care of the old woman for me,” it breaks me every time I see it. I find different things to thrill me every time I watch, and I wonder how much of it is because I was in it, and how much of it is just like a fan.
TVLINE | How did you decide where we would see each character in the future and where they would end up, both personally and professionally?
GREEN | With regard to the specifics of where everyone ended up, we just talked a lot about [each of those characters] in the writers’ room and where we wanted to see some of them. We had all toyed with the idea of Jonah getting into politics. At one point, at the beginning of our conversations for Season 6, we were going to get him to put his energy into it, post-Amy, and then we ended up going [direction], largely because those stories would have taken him a lot out of the store. But yes, politics has always been something we talked about for him. And reopening Sturgis & Sons seemed like a natural place for Glenn to end, in a way that made us feel good.
TVLINE | Let’s say America Ferrera was not available to go back to the end, to complete the cycle of Amy and Jonah’s story. If Amy and Jonah had not been together again, do you think Jonah would have found the motivation to launch a bid for councilman?
FELDMAN | Ideally, yes. That would have been an argument I had with the writers … Jonah has grown up, he has found a voice, and he is not just wavering with vague ideas of philanthropic work or fighting for a cause. [He would need] something a little more narrow and focused and energized, like a city council. That was the fight [in his life]. Amy was the emotional support, the happiness and the soul.
TVLINE | What do you expect the legacy of the show to be?
GREEN | First of all, we want it to be remembered as a very funny program, but it was a bit of a snapshot of the times we live in, specifically for retail workers, who are a group of people who do not often stand out and are underrepresented on TV and in the cinema. We like to be able to give them a little voice.
MILLER | I would say the same, that we show low-income workers that they find respect and dignity in their work, even if the company does not treat them [with respect and dignity]. From a comedy standpoint, I’m proud of how deep our bank is in terms of characters, and how we’ve been able to develop secondary characters from just, like, a joke in one episode, recurring and in the case of Sandra de Kaliko Kauahi, for a regular in the series.
FELDMAN | One of the most common things I think a successful program does is to create a group of people that you consider to be almost your friends: people who would stay in your memory for a long time. I think this show is a time capsule for a specific time in American history, specifically the history of the American working class. I mean, we started this during Obama, even Trump, and ended with Joe Biden. This was an interesting time to be alive. It wasn’t always great, but that’s what this show is about. We talked about many of the problems and we had conversations between Americans. And not just Americans – most of the western world and other parts of the world as well. You will be able to watch this program 20 years from now and get an idea of what the general zeitgeist was culturally, politically, etc., and that is what I am most proud of.
TVLINE | Everything is currently being revived or restarted. Ben, can you see yourself playing Jonah again?
FELDMAN | I mean, look, some shows do a revival for, like, an episode, which would be great. But a whole series of Jonas? No. I think I’ve done enough [with] Jonah, and there are other characters that I would prefer to see live in addition to this series – as if they were developing this idea for Cheyenne and Bo. We are in a place in history where a relatively privileged, middle-aged, clumsy, clumsy white guy is not necessarily the show that everyone wants to watch the most, and I’m glad it isn’t that anymore. [Laughs]
TVLINE | It has been several months since it was first announced that NBC was developing Bo and Cheyenne. Any updates on the potential spinoff?
GREEN | It is still in the early stages of development. That’s probably all we can really say … We are not directly involved.
MILLER | They’re working on a script, that’s all we know.
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