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La Brea Season 2 Finale: All Your Questions, Answered by the Show Creator
We have all the intel on those massive La Brea Season 2 cliffhangers.
The Season 2 finale of NBC’s La Brea is in the books, and though it brought plenty of reveals, there are still a ton of mysteries left for Season 3. So NBC Insider caught up with La Brea showrunner and creator David Appelbaum to get some answers to all our burning questions.
The two-part finale of Season 2 centered the action squarely back in 10,000 B.C., as Eve (Natalia Zea), Gavin (Eoin Macken), Izzy (Zyra Gorecki), Josh (Jack Martin) and the rest of the survivors try to access a secret lab that holds what could be the only portal left to send them all home. Spoiler alert: It doesn’t go as planned.
There are deaths, time travel changes to erase one of those deaths, a whole lot more portals and full-on dinosaur chaos as the sci-fi mystery takes its break and gears up for Year 3 next season. So let’s fire up the aurora machine and jump in.
Gavin dies, but only for a little while
After capturing James (Jonno Roberts), the survivors use his knowledge of the portals to access the hidden lab and activate what appears to be the last portal left in 10,000 B.C. But it’s there they run across the cave of red flowers that has haunted Gavin all season, as it matches up to the vision of where he saw Eve die. So when they’re attacked by a giant lizard, Gavin saves Eve and takes the hit himself but is impaled in the fight and eventually succumbs to his injuries.
Thankfully, they have a time machine in the next room. Eve and Izzy go back in time by four hours to leave a warning for Gavin, and when they return back to the “present,” he is alive and well after receiving their note.
Appelbaum said they tried to keep it simple but did enjoy finding a new way to play with time travel in this world.
“Time-travel is a really interesting story device, and that was a new wrinkle on the time travel story we hadn’t really told yet,” Appelbaum said. “What we always strive for in these time-travel stories in simplicity, because we don’t want the audience confused about what’s going on. We just want to keep them in the emotional storytelling. We’ve gone back thousands of years, or ahead thousands of years, so why not try just a few hours?”
What’s up with the mystery symbol and Petra?
With a new season finale also comes a new mystery, as the survivors stumble upon a young child named Petra, who is found near a group of people who have been mauled by an animal. Petra is searching for her mother, and Scott (Rohan Mirchandaney) pieces together that Petra’s mother works for the company he was set to interview with on the day the sinkhole happened—it’s actually that appointment that brought him downtown in the first place.
Appelbaum said this is a mystery they’re teeing up for Season 3, especially once you realize Levi (Nicholas Gonzalez) is sporting a tattoo of the same mystery logo as the company.
“That symbol is the symbol of the organization behind the military base that Petra tells us there in 10,000 B.C. They’re going to be an important group we’ll interface with as we go through Season 3,” he explained. "We’re going to find out Petra and her mother came from that military base, and Levi interacted with them...not in 10,000 B.C. but while he was in Los Angeles in modern times. They are going to be a key component to a larger story into what’s really going on.”
Lucas and Veronica are having a baby
Yes, Veronica (Lily Santiago) is pregnant! She tells Lucas (Josh McKenzie), and though his reception is a bit shellshocked and mixed, the two do find common ground—and Lucas works to find his inner hero when they need him most, wrangling a horse to help clear the tree blocking the portal’s cooling system. Lucas was having a bit of a crisis of faith, though seems to have realized he can hopefully be a better man regardless of the time period.
With the survivors still trapped in the past, Appelbaum teased that pregnancy will be a major factor in Season 3.
“It’s hard to think of something more challenging than being pregnant in a place with no good access to medical care. It creates story conflict, and it’s also a way to challenge Lucas and Veronica in their relationship,” he said. “It’ll challenge their notions of who they are, and what they want their child to be. That’s an interesting story, looking at how we can show new shades of these characters.”
So, are they all trapped in the past for good?
Just when it seemed like they had a surefire ticket home, James gets the drop on Gavin and the ensuing gunfight fries the lab and short-circuits the portal for good. The clash ends with James dead and the portal kaput As far as we know, this was the emergency lab and only portal left—so how on (pre-historic) Earth are they getting home, now?
Appelbaum obviously couldn’t tell us that, but did tease Season 3 will look to reimagine some of the series’ core themes.
“There will be different variations of that as we go through, different conflicts between different characters. Our survivors will find themselves living in different places,” he teased. “Similar themes, but lots of fun twists on the ideas we’ve been grappling with from the beginning. If you’ve been a fan of the show from the beginning, you’ll appreciate what we’re doing as we get into Season 3.”
Where is Eve?
As the portal starts to go haywire, Eve is sucked in as it absorbs anything nearby. Where is she sent? That’s the big question. We’ve already seen the portals open to all kinds of eras at this point, from the 1980s to the distant past. As the portal was overloading, we saw dozens of different time periods flashing through, so she could literally be anywhere, from the 1700s to possibly back where she started in the 2020s.
“The show at its heart has always been about a divided family that’s trying to get back to each other. We’ve done that in a lot of ways both physically and emotionally. In the beginning a sinkhole separates this family,” he explained. “Then they get back together physically, but are separated emotionally. So at the end of Season 2 we wanted to find another way to separate this family.”
Appelbaum said learning Eve’s temporal landing spot is definitely a reveal they’re holding onto for Season 3.
“It continues the theme of the show in a very dramatic way, but also sets up a very interesting mystery for us going into Season 3,” he explained. “Where did she go? How do we get her back? It’s a great story driver for Season 3.”
What else has fallen though those portals?
One apparent side effect of the lab being damaged is dozens of new portals opening up in the sky above 10,000 B.C. this would seem to indicate more stuff, people, and creatures falling through those portals from all over the time stream. We already got a peek at a T. Rex as it chased Gavin, Izzy and Josh in the finale’s closing moments. But that’s just one thing. With so many portals, you could have everything from future tech, to Civil War soldiers potentially stumbling through the next few sinkholes next season.
“One of the fun conceits of the show is these auroras can bring things from any time period, and for us the coolest thing we could think of was to bring dinosaurs [laughs],” Appelbaum said. “So that’s definitely a tease of dinosaurs for Season 3, but really anything could be down here from any time period as we saw all these auroras open up at the end of Season 2. Anything could be around the corner.”
So who is Gavin’s sister?
James’ dying message to Gavin warned him about his sister, even though Gavin seemingly had no idea he has a sister. James seems to indicate he should be the least of his worries, and that this mystery sister is far more ruthless and threatening. Could this be a sister who is still in the future, who had been working on Project Lazarus with James? Why is she such a threat?
Appelbaum teased Season 3 will bring answers, though fans might want to take James’ warning with a grain of salt.
“James definitely did say she’s someone to be weary of, but James is also a manipulative person,” he said. “He’s proven time and time again he’s not a very trustworthy person. She might be an antagonist, or she might not. We might assume one thing about her, but who she is and where we find her? That will be a surprise.”
The first two seasons of La Brea are streaming now on Peacock.
