La Brea Creator Sheds Light on [Spoiler]’s Vanishing and the Season 1 Finale’s Other Big Twists
The following contains major spoilers from the Season 1 finale of NBC‘s La Brea.
The good news, as Season 1 of NBC’s La Brea came to a close? Isaiah (aka wee Gavin) did make it to the Topanga mountain top and stepped into the light portal, thus ensuring the future existence of Josh and Izzy, who in turn immediately rebounding from, like, bad tummy aches.
The bad news? Josh barely had a moment to celebrate his restored future when the light crack that Isaiah had entered abruptly pulsated, disappearing Josh, Riley and map-toting Lily who were standing nearby. Elsewhere in the land down under, Scott leaned on Rebecca Aldridge to share more of what she knows, and she led him to a most unexpected site.
Meanwhile, topside, Ella’s saved map led her, Gavin, Izzy, Sophia and Agent Markman on a bit of a wild goose chase around Seattle, eventually bringing them to a small campsite sinkhole. Taking a literal leap of faith, Gavin, Izzy and Ella (who as Lily had left Veronica ensnared by a bear trap) hopped into the void, winding up on a beach circa 10,000 B.C. (as evidenced by the iconic beast that lumbered by).
TVLine asked La Brea creator/co-showrunner David Appelbaum many of our burning questions about the freshman finale’s big twists, and where the fall’s No. 1 new drama is heading in Season 2.
TVLINE | OK, first up: Josh, Riley and Lily. Do we the viewers have enough information to make an educated guess about when and where they disappeared to?
I don’t want to say exactly where they go, but in Season 2 they will be in a different time period. Their story will be outside of 10,000 B.C. That will be one of the fun things about Season 2, finding them in a world completely different from anything we’ve seen on the show so far.
TVLINE | I was thinking about what Aldridge said about time being a flat circle or whatever, and that would at least suggest that a portal could deposit someone in the future, beyond 2021.
It’s possible. One of the fun things about the show is that we want to keep ourselves open to lots of different story possibilities, and the world of these sinkholes and the science we’ve set up behind it allows you to have different time periods that we can explore.
TVLINE | I enjoyed how Scott called out Aldridge as the “bad guy” sci-fi character who knows more than she’s saying. I think that meta moments like that, and the direct Lost comparison in the pilot, are important for a show like this to have.
Yeah, humor has always been a driving factor in this show. This can be an edge-of-your-seat thriller, but at the same time it can get tedious if everything is so serious and dire all the time. Having a character like Scott who can break the tension is always really important.
TVLINE | That very modern tower that Aldridge led Scott to — is that going to be a main set for Season 2?
It’s going to be an important set piece, yeah. We are going to explore this building and go into it at a certain point and see what’s inside. I think that’s going to be one of the fun things, really opening up this world that they are in. The animals will always be an important part, but there are a lot of mysteries to explore — and one of the things the audience will be curious about is, “What exactly is this place?”
TVLINE | I like how you gave it a big ol’ solar panel roof, to head off at the pass any questions about power supply.
[Laughs] Did you zoom in on that?
TVLINE | Is anybody of importance waiting for us inside that tower?
There will be people of importance, absolutely. We will find a lot of interesting things inside there — but I won’t say who or what.
TVLINE | Turning to Gavin, Izzy and Ella…. I did the math, and allowing for eight hours of sleep per night, they have at least a 22-day walk ahead of them, from Seattle to Los Angeles. Do you have any shortcuts planned? Or are they going to saddle up that woolly mammoth?
Well, the adventure of their journey to Los Angeles is going to be a fun story point. I don’t want to give away how they get there or how that journey exactly goes, but it’s going to be one of the big pleasures of Season 2, taking these characters who had been in the modern world this whole time and seeing how they survive in the world down there. There is no clearing, and there are no other people that they’ve fallen down there with, so it’s going to be an interesting thing to see what they do — and if they can get there.
TVLINE | CGI-wise, I imagine it would have been a lot cheaper to have one of those prehistoric birds fly overhead to confirm the era they landed in, instead of trotting out a woolly mammoth.
[Laughs] But everyone was waiting for that woolly mammoth, I think! That’s one of the most iconic animals of that time period, and we were really pleased with how that one came out.
TVLINE | You established that Silas is some sort of scientist peer of Rebecca’s, but people were expecting for another shoe to drop regarding his identity. Is there one to come?
We are going to learn a lot more about him in Season 2. One of the things this show does well is we give the audience answers — we’ve been doing that all season. But there’s only so far we want to push that, and we do want to leave things in question and open to be answered in Season 2. But yes, we’re going to learn more about what his connection to Gavin and to Aldridge is. He’ll be an important part of the story moving ahead.
TVLINE | And just to be clear, Silas is in fact Isaiah’s grandfather?
Yes. He is.
TVLINE | If I were to speculate that Rebecca and her people were pioneers in time travel research and they accidentally created sinkholes along the way… would I be close?
I can’t tell you that! But I appreciate the careful viewing of the show.
Want scoop on La Brea Season 2? You know I’m sitting on some! Email InsideLine@tvline.com and your question may be answered via Matt’s Inside Line.
Well. I guess we got our Back to the Future reference with the map disappearing! ;)
Anybody know what city that was when they said they were in Seattle. It sure as heck wasn’t Seattle. Maybe Vancouver. The Duwamish river in Seattle is an industrial sewer.
I believe they shot this in Australia ha!
It was filmed in New Zealand,
It was filmed in Victoria, Australia. I watched some of the filming and I live just outside of Melbourne.
The credits at the end said Victoria, Australia. But I don’t know if that was true for city shots or just wilderness.
Oops, Australia…
What I want to know is why Ella/Lily didn’t vanish like the map did since she didn’t go through the light with Isaiah. Or will we find out in Season 2 how she ended up in the present world?
I was thinking that too but then I figured maybe she didn’t get to 1988 at the right when Isaiah did. Which I guess goes with another commenter or said they believe Josh, Riley, and Lily are in 1988. Lily was supposed to get the map to Isaiah, but Rebecca must not have counted on Josh and Riley being right there and going after her.
The storyline has been that the first thing Gavin and Lily remember is walking down a country road, TOGETHER, in 1988. Then both were adopted, by different families. Are we supposed to think that there is a different scenario now?
I think they meant that she’ll end up going through another portal at some point that’s going to take her to that same day in 1988, only a few minutes or seconds later. Departure time wouldn’t really matter if they’re going to end up at the same moment in the end.
Do you think it could have been a three people go down and three people have to come up (or just another tile period) type of thing?
Marybeth – dead or alive when S2 starts? Place your bets …
.
Also, why did neither Veronica nor Lily think to wedge a largish branch into the trap to relieve tension? For the DRAMA!
.
And yes, I’ll be back for S2. :)
I hope she’s alive. I started out hating her, but she’s grown on me.
And will Veronica still be stuck in that bear-trap? You know, the one that broke neither skin nor bone.
Lily still has the map, so maybe she might use it to help Josh, Riley and herself find a way back to 10,000 B.C. in Season 2.
When will Season 2 of La Brea start?
What date does season 2 start?
Uhh, do the math. This season started at fall. So the next will next fall. Or in 2023 midseason.
My thoughts
1. Josh, Riley, and Lilly are all in 1988 just like Gavin/Isaiah. Otherwise everything unravels. Ella and Gavin were found together so they will be again.
2. The future is definitely involved. The loop was probably created to stop something much worse from happening, probably as a direct result of the sink hole tech breaking time.
3. Gavin should really have brought supplies. He knew he was going to the sinkhole and that he was going in, there is no excuse for not having food/water/survival gear, ect…
4. We have yet to meet the other locals outside of Para’s village. They could be from any point in history and are likely aggressive. Add to that the future time scientists in the tower and we are looking at people being the biggest danger.
The way the creator talked its going to be even further in the past. It won’t break things if lily ends up going through another portal and ends up still at that moment in 1988. The way time travel works you can travel from any point in time and end still end up at that same date at the same time.
How can Ella be Lily, if they are both from 2021 (Ella is an adult in 2021 and Lily is a child in 2021 (that fell through the LaBrea sinkhole in 2021)?
Isn’t that some sort of a Paradox – the same person in the same time frame – but at 2 different ages?
Different theories of time travel have different explanations, but in the most basic terms it’s up to the writers. Within the show we know time is broken, what should be linear is not anymore. All the characters seem to be in a loop with the key players going back and forth and making changes which alter the experience of the other players. For example Silas trying to stop Isaiah from going through only happens if he has prior knowledge of the journey. Aldridge implied similar knowledge before jumping out of the plane. Honestly, there are much bigger paradoxes to worry about, like if the plane doesn’t crash how do the excavators find a crashed plane. The very act of never having crashed it removes the warning and causes the plane to crash all over again. At some point you just gotta go with it.
This is what’s known as the “bootstrap paradox”. The show ‘Dark’ on Netflix did an excellent job at this. An easy way to look at it is to think about a time machine. You find instructions on how to build one, so you build it, but then you decide to send the instructions back in time. If you never send them back in time they won’t be found and the time machine won’t be built.
When it comes to time travel it’s best to try and not over think it or it will NEVER make sense.
I love this show and I’m glad they went the ‘Dark’ format.
The child and the adult wasn’t in 2021 at the same time. She was a child in 2021 before she fell into the sink hole. Then she wasn’t in 2021 no more. She goes up to 1988 and grows into the adult that is in 2021 after the sink hole is gone and no longer there as a child.
This whole thread has turned into an Abbot and Costello bit gone rogue. Who’s on first? I don’t know! No, he’s at second…
I think Levi or Lucas may be the younger version of Silas. Levi seems annoyed that Eve is over their relationship. I predict Lucas will be bitter no one being around when his mom died.
Levi is the wrong skin color and background. Silas worked on time travel with Aldridge which means he has a science background. As for Lucas, Silas caused Marybeth’s death by having his men try to stop Isaiah from going through. If Silas was Luke he would have known everything that happened and been able to avoid the death.
.
My guess is that Josh will get Riley pregnant and the baby will be Gavin/Isaiah. Silas would still be Isaiah’s grandfather because Silas is Gavin/Isiah. It also explains why Silas was so eager to prevent Josh’s birth. He may be hoping to erase the whole family from history in the hopes of fixing time before the tear in the fabric of time destroys the human race.
OK, now I’m lost. I’m OK (oddly enough) with the same person being alive at two different ages at the same time. Like how the “original” Lilly, age 12, is present in 2021, and so is Ella, the grown-up Lilly who returned in 1988. (The minutia ignored here is that in 2021, Ella would be 45 years old but instead looks late 20s-ish.)
But if Josh is Gavin’s father, and Gavin is the father of Josh… if Silas is Gavin’s grandfather, that makes Silas Josh’s father, except that Gavin is Josh’s father… so if Silas is Gavin… you’ve got 2 entities stuck in a cycle of son/father/grand-father/great-grandfather? (And Riley gets to be Eve’s never-met mother-in-law?)The genetics alone boggles, never mind the story-line.
Maybe this will help.
1. Remember the plane. The future found the crash, sent a message to the past. The past gets the message, the plane never crashed. In the future the plane disappears but everyone remembers it having existed in even though history changed and erased it.
2. Assume Eve married someone completely new and had a son who isn’t Josh in the original timeline. She and her not Josh son (we will call him Nosh) go back in time and meet Riley. Nosh and Riley fall in love and have a son. That son travels forward in time and meets a young Eve and procreates with her. Now Nosh is erased from history, Josh is born, and the grandfather paradox has begun. But just like the plane, history can be rewritten without unraveling. Now Josh exists procreates with Riley and the Gavin loop begins.
3. Two statements can be true at once. Silas is Gavin who is Isaiah, and Silas is Isaiah’s grandfather. The reason behind this is that Josh is both Gavin’s father and son, having replaced Nosh in the timeline.
No matter how you slice that though, it still means that Eve would have “relations” with her own grandchild. Let us not go down that road please.
I like and understand this theory. Do you think Aldridge is really future Riley, & that Isaiah’s parents (Josh and Riley) aren’t dead but in another time? I feel like both her and Silas know the events that need to play out. She could’ve ended up in 1988 and aged to be Aldridge since she jumped out of Gavin’s plane in 2021? Although for some reason i have a feeling the 3 of them: Josh, Riley and Lily) are now somewhere in the future, not the past.
We know Josh, Riley, and Lilly are in 1988. They must be for the map to have led everyone to the sink hole and for Lilly to be with Gavin in the past as adults.
I doubt Riley is Aldridge because the skin tones don’t match. Aldridge seems more Asian and Riley looks much more white. That said tv logic is flexible.
I get the sense things go very wrong for Gavin and he watches everyone die before the world ends. He is trying to erase himself from history to save the world.
I don’t think Riley is Rebecca Aldridge. I think Veronica is Aldridge.
The actress who plays Aldridge is Australian (as is about a third of the cast). Her name, and her father, are Chinese. But yeah, this show’s been ‘flexible’ about matching up past/future characters ethnicity, eye color & age.
I doubt Josh & Riley are Isaiah’s parents – not if they’ve gone forward to 1988 when Isaiah is already age 5. But I do agree that Isaiah’s parents are in a different time, rather than dead – unless Silas killed them.
Thanks. That does help. So if Silas is Gavin (or Josh), somewhere there’s an original begatting “Nosh” who’s disappeared.
Do I sense a Woolly Mammoth Whisperer in the future… er, past?
LOVED the woolly mammoth!
I think most of us that have been watching were pretty happy seeing it lumbering along the shoreline…
Can’t wait for season 2. We need more explanation on the time travel issues.
Can’t wait for season 2 when is it coming out
This is Manifest all over. Promise of a premise but flimsy characters and plot holes. It needs to breath and not be a caricature of itself.
At least it’s fun to watch so far even things don’t make sense. Manifest had or has too much melodrama.
This show is fun but makes absolutely no sense. lol. You just gotta run with it. “I’d like to welcome you to the writers room for La Brea. The first thing we need to do is discuss how time travel and paradoxes work……..HA! JUST KIDDING. do whatever.”
I love this show. it’s so good! Can’t wait for season 2.
I sense there are a ton of drugs in the writers’ room!
🤣😂…I think many of us were thinking the same thing from the time we first saw Scott vaping…just saying.
I love this show! Just wish there could’ve been more episodes! I also love all the comments everyone has made. You’re giving me a lot to think about! Even though my head is spinning a little!😂
I’ve been enjoying the show more and more. I almost dropped it and glad I didn’t. The story is moving along. Things aren’t so out there like Lost. Yes, it’s out there because all this can’t happen in real life, but so far, things haven’t gotten so crazy that it’s hard to follow.
Silas is Josh. That’s my guess
That was my guess, BUT if Silas really is Gavin’s biological grandfather, then it just becomes all kinds of icky in terms of Eve’s physical relationship with Gavin (she’d be married to and having children with her own grandson).
I agree that It’s Josh, not Gavin, who grows up to make a mess of things with the time portals. So he ends up hiding out in 10,000 bce as Silas where he’s trying to prevent himself from being born in the present day.
Captain Janeway said it best “Time travel gives me a headache.”, or something to that effect. Still the show is an enjoyable bit of hokum, warts and all.
This show is a hot mess. But I can hardly wait for next season. :-)
Giant sloths and wooly mammoths yeah!
i still wish it were eve who had died and not marybeth. marybeth has actually shown growth as a character, whereas eve is still as nauseatingly self-righteous as ever. pass. meanwhile, izzy, gavin, and ella jumped in a hole and landed in seattle? “how are you going to get to LA” is the most real line of dialogue this entire episode, LOL
(I’m betting on Woolly Mammoth transport!)
Agreed about Eve!I can’t stand her, while MaryBeth was turning g out ok
I like this show more than any of the other new shows that has been on this year.
Has Anyone figured out Silas is Josh yet? Reason being he is the only one trying to stop this perpetual circle of time warp. He already knew Isaiah/Gavin is/become Josh and Izzy’s father.
Yep. See Socrates (and me) above.