Spoiler alert! This story contains spoilers for the Season 4 fall finale of A Million Little Things, “The Things We Keep Inside.”
Gary Mendez (played by James Roday Rodriguez) has been put through the wringer so far in A Million Little Things' fourth season. While it seems that he’ll avoid any legal repercussions from his attack on Sophie’s music teacher, his actions did cost him his relationships with both Sophie and girlfriend Darcy. And at the same time he learned that Darcy had reconciled with her ex — with whom she was expecting a baby — he found out that Maggie had also moved on, with a member of his beloved Boston Bruins, no less.
The Season 4 fall finale, called “The Things We Keep Inside,” allowed Gary to get some closure on his feelings for Darcy — painful as that closure was — when Darcy’s son Liam ran away from home and showed up at Gary’s apartment. To Gary’s surprise, Liam’s dad Stephen was the one who came to collect his son, not Darcy, which allowed Gary to see the man Darcy chose over him. James Roday Rodriguez talked to TV Insider about how that really forced Gary to see that Darcy was gone for good.
Having another moment with Liam, while perhaps somewhat painful, I think could be constructive. He got to say goodbye to the kid one more time [and] he got to sort of see that the man that Darcy’s going to end up with is a decent man who cares about her and who cares about Liam. And just to get that closure, like you said, where you can’t lie in bed at night and wonder what if. Getting it served to you like that is a kick in the pants and maybe can help accelerate the transition to whatever the next chapter holds.
So with Darcy out of the picture, does that mean there’s hope for Gary and Maggie? Gary happened upon the Post-It where Maggie had written “I’m in” when they first got together — a sentiment he echoed when she asked him to accompany her on a road trip to meet her stalker (God bless these storylines). But James Roday Rodriguez cautioned that Gary’s rekindled feelings may have been more a product of his realizing it was really over with Darcy.
I just know that for most of us it’s usually a defense mechanism. It’s a coping mechanism to end a relationship and then start going through all of the people that came before her and hey, are any of them single these days? That’s what we do. Gary and Maggie are their own animals. They did go through something very specific. So I want to be fair and respectful in that.
While it’s true that both of them surviving cancer is a very specific bond that Gary and Maggie share, the actor pointed out that there’s only so many times the couple could do the on-off thing, so if and when it happens again, it needs to be the last time.
But what I would think, and I don’t know because I’m not master [DJ] Nash, is that if Gary and Maggie were to get back together, that could happen exactly one more time and it would have to be right and it would have to be thoughtful and it would have to be nuanced and they would both need to recognize, ‘Hey, if we screw this up again, we’re definitely done.’
As “The Things We Keep Inside” was the fall finale for A Million Little Things’ fourth season, it’ll be awhile until we see exactly what goes down between Gary and Maggie on their road trip to Albany. A Million Little Things, which has seen a big win in the ratings this season, will return to ABC at 10 p.m. ET on Wednesday, February 23, 2022. In the meantime, check out our 2021 TV Schedule to see what shows are premiering through the end of the year.
