Elsbeth Showrunner Reveals Finale Plot Twist Was Just Too Real for a Fictional Show

Elsbeth ’s first season has been over for several weeks now with the show’s second installment coming later this year, but fans still don’t seem to be settled after the finale’s plot twist turned out to be very different from what everyone expected.

Elsbeth’s season 1 ending proved that there was no longer any bad blood between her and her boss Wagner, though she nonetheless misled the attentive viewers when it came to finding out who the real criminal in the fashion-related case was. Now that the entangled murder mystery is successfully solved by the quirky detective, Elsbeth’s showrunner opens up about the creative team taking the realism notion a bit too seriously.

In the season 1 finale correspondingly titled A Fitting Finale, Elsbeth embarks on her last investigation before more will come in season 2 as she tries to uncover the mystery behind the murder of fashion photographer Ezra Tate. The tragedy suspiciously takes place on a runway that is supposed to be the last for retiring model Nadine Clay who’s been Ezra’s friend for a long time at that point.

Elsbeth has doubts concerning Nadine and her ex-husband Nick and considers that both of them had strong motives to kill Ezra. Viewers are eventually misguided by the episode’s script, with many of them delusionally believing that it was Nadine who’d disposed of Ezra for having compromising photos of her, yet the following events reveal that the real criminal is fashion designer Matteo Hart.

Talking about the season finale and the viewers’ reaction to it, Elsbeth’s showrunner Jonathan Tolins reflected on how he came up with the whole entangled storyline, saying he was flattered by the fans’ question about how he always makes it in a way that the audience has no suspicion about the real culprit at all.

According to Tolins, the only thing he wanted for the finale was “to get something by an audience, make it funny and, hopefully, so entertaining that they will let it go. Matteo leads Elsbeth to the fashion show, so I’m hoping viewers’ antennae don’t go up and they think, ‘Oh, that’s our murderer’.”

The showrunner later added that the episode’s storyline turned out to be so close to real-life crime cases that the show’s script supervisor got a call from CBS’ legal team that expressed their worry as “it seems to have been based on a very specific case.”

Despite that, it does appear to be some kind of compliment for Tolins himself, as he admitted that the whole story had nothing to do with anything that could possibly take place in reality, but “I’m happy when that happens, because it seems somewhat specific and plausible.”

Elsbeth will be back to CBS with its season 2 this fall.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter