[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Sugar Season 1 Episode 7 “The Friends You Keep.”]
Now that the big secret about Colin Farrell‘s private investigator is out—he’s an alien!—the show can lean into that. And that includes a change to Sugar‘s opening credits, which now end with his eyes glowing.
It was always the plan to do that following the reveal in Episode 6, says executive producer Audrey Chon. “We were hiding a lot of things and we thought it’s just kind of a wink and a nod to revealing that he’s an alien at that point,” she tells TV Insider.
Sugar’s investigation into the disappearance of Olivia Siegel (Sydney Chandler), the granddaughter of producer Jonathan (James Cromwell), led to him meeting Melanie (Amy Ryan), Olivia’s former stepmother. The two have bonded, and he’s turned to her at points, but he can’t tell her his secret, as much as he wants to. Why is that true?
“I think that there’s a wounded, soulful quality to her that is true for him as well,” explains executive producer Simon Kinberg. “And I think that there’s a sense that she doesn’t fully fit into the family and doesn’t fully fit into our world. That is also true for him. And I think that there’s this sort of broken connection or connection between broken beings that they forge over the span of the season and that he has never really had with anyone else. And so there is just this deep empathy, this deep connection that he feels with her because of the fact that they have so much in common despite not being the same species.”
Sugar then finds out that he and the other aliens on Earth have to leave, because the wrong (powerful) person found out the truth about them—and yes, it all leads back to his investigation. But rather than back off due to the threat of exposure, Sugar goes to the man’s house (he’s a senator’s son) to find Olivia. The man and alien fight, and it ends with the kidnapper’s death by suicide. Sugar then goes down to the basement, which looks like a kidnapper’s lair (DVDs/CDs, a hook from the ceiling, weapons on the wall), and opens a freezer. He says Olivia’s name, but it’s unclear if she’s alive or dead. Ending the episode like that is partly to make that moment more about Sugar after everything that came before it, Chon confirms.
“We wanted to leave that for the finale candidly and leave audiences kind of waiting to–he’s found her, but is she alive?” she says. “We just thought that was an excellent way to end the penultimate episode.”
Do you think Olivia’s alive? What did you think of the latest reveals? Let us know in the comments section, below.
Sugar, Season 1 Finale, Friday, May 17, Apple TV+