Secret telephones, house break-ins, and spy plots, oh my! As The Flight Attendant continues to unfold on HBO Max it’s solely getting crazier. However don’t fear. Collection developer Steve Yockey advised Decider that every one of this madness, from Megan’s many secrets and techniques to Cassie’s altering internal monologues, is occurring for a cause. Spoilers forward for The Flight Attendant Episodes 4 and 5.
Up till this newest batch of episodes, Rosie Perez’s Megan has been a welcome however largely inconsequential a part of this airborne drama. That’s altering, and that shift comes instantly from Chris Bohjalian’s novel of the identical identify. “Within the guide, you simply get that letter on the very finish, or in the direction of the top of the guide that’s like, ‘By the best way, Megan was a spy,’” Yockey defined.
For the sequence adaptation, he needed to increase on this throwaway plot level. “When you could have an actor like Rosie, you need to let her work,” Yockey stated. “I feel Megan’s such a beautiful character. Very like Annie [Zosia Mamet], she’s an unbelievable foil for Cassie [Kaley Cuoco]. You noticed it in Episode 3 when she’s drunk on the bar in Rome. She’s evaluating their lives, and also you’re beginning to get the sense of — as a result of she says within the first episode, ‘She’s my greatest pal.’ And he or she says it once more in Rome. These two girls have very completely different lives and have a look at one another in very alternative ways. They’re associates who’re taking a look at one another throughout an enormous distance.”
Megan wasn’t the one character who went by a significant shift in Episodes 4 and 5. Ever since Cassie first awakened subsequent to the murdered Alex (Michiel Huisman), she’s been unable to shake him from her head. Her guilt and nervousness is portrayed actually as Cassie and her notion of Alex have lengthy, drawn-out conversations in her thoughts. Throughout the first few episodes Cassie began to fall in love along with her imagined model of Alex, even going as far to confess her emotions throughout one in every of Episode 4’s dream sequences.
“I feel we get into that that’s not the healthiest factor,” Yockey stated. “Proper after Episode 4, which is the form of waltz by the thoughts palace, a gorgeous second that John [Strickland] — who directed that episode — staged, she finds out he may be a felony. Issues begin to go downhill quick in her thoughts.”
The artistic workforce determined to show Cassie’s altering opinions of Alex by really altering their thoughts palace. “There’s this concept that, as Cassie finds out extra about who Alex actually was, this man that she met in Bangkok, his character within the thoughts palace adjustments. The issues which might be within the thoughts palace, the issues which might be included in that lodge suite change and evolve. As new issues enter her mind, they present up differently within the lodge suite. That continues on by the very finish of the finale.”
The evolving lodge room isn’t the primary time the sequence has experimented with Cassie’s altering perceptions of Alex. All through all the sequence the quantity of blood on Cassie’s model of Alex has various. That is there to reflect Cassie’s PTSD.
“While you expertise trauma — like once you’re in mattress subsequent to a lifeless individual — that second, versus ‘It’s so darkish!’ it’s like all the things will get actually vibrant. That’s what individuals who expertise PTSD speak about. Gentle hurts their eyes, issues really feel too vibrant or brighter than they’re alleged to be,” Yockey defined. “Over the course of the pilot, with out drawing an excessive amount of consideration to it, the primary time he talks to her his throat is slit, he’s coated in blood. The second time he talks to her his throat is slit however all of the blood is gone. The following time he talks to her he doesn’t have the throat slit anymore, and he’s in a position to rise up. By the start of Episode 2, he’s clothed and appearing like a traditional individual. Your mind desires to take this trauma and begin to normalize it, and also you don’t keep in mind the ache that intensely.”
“That’s what’s taking place in Cassie’s mind throughout the primary episode and into the second episode. After which it continues, and he’s there, for all intents and functions, to assist her take care of this trauma,” Yockey added. “She additionally has all of this different trauma that she’s buried, and he begins bleeding into all of those reminiscences. He begins bleeding into all of those different areas that she’s not addressing, all of those elements of her life that she’s attempting to lie about. I feel he turns into far more than she would have ever supposed or needed him to be.”
Episodes 6 and seven of The Flight Attendant premiere on HBO Max Thursday, December 10. The miniseries’ finale premieres on Thursday, December 17.
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