After an almost perfect nine-episode run, AMC’s bracing historical horror The Terror delivered a flawless tenth and final episode with ‘We Are Gone’. An unflinching, absorbing, and ultimately cathartic hour of television, the season finale turned the last screws on the Captain Crozier (Jared Harris) doomed men of the Franklin Expedition, delivering the death march that we always knew was coming in one sweeping final blow.

The penultimate episode, ‘The C, the C, the Open C,’ sent off favorites Fitzjames (Tobias Menzies) and Blanky (Ian Hart) with earned, even triumphant deaths, but The Terror’s season finale distinctly swung the pendulum further in the direction of tragedy without ever losing sight of the men, real men, who’s lives were lost in the ill-fated journey.

“The men who were actually on this expedition, they would have had hope for a very long time and many of them probably until the moment of death,” said series co-showrunner and executive producer David Kajganich, “and with that hope comes the retention of one's whole personality, your sense of humor, your sense of irony, your spirit of generosity. In many cases those things are probably encouraged by a disaster, a long term slow-motion disaster like this, so we never wanted to lose touch with the warmth of these characters.”

In anticipation of the stunning finale, spoke with Kajganich along with co-showrunner and EP Soo Hugh about sending off The Terror and saying goodbye to those wonderfully rich characters. With only a bit of time and a lot to dig into, I focused on three of the finale’s most haunting sequences; Dr. Goodsir's death, the chilling final shots of Edward and Starvation Cove, and the serene final frames of the episode. Check out what the showrunners had to say in the breakdown below.

Dr. Goodsir's Death

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Image via AMC

Poor darling Dr. Goodsir, who tried so hard to save his shipmates from lead poisoning, and when he could not, at least uphold his Hippocratic Oath. But at Hickey's command, he was forced to carve up a murdered man for dinner, and ultimately, made the choice to become a killer himself. Sacrificing his life in hopes of ending Hickey's mutinous reign, Goodsir washed his body in poison inside and out, leaving a deadly trap for those in the camp who conceded to cannibalism. Of course, in the excruciating tradition of The Terror, his sacrifice didn't amount to much. The scheming of men and ravages of nature beat him to the punch, but Paul Ready's lovely performance and the character's consummate upstanding morals ensured that we all loved Goodsir, and his final moments were downright devastating.

As his body shuddered and seized, we're shown a brief glimpse at his final visions -- flowers, a shell, a crystal; the natural wonders of the world. His death may seem peaceful (comparatively, in any case), but Kajganich explained that there's an underlying current of tragedy.

"What a puzzle to figure out how to figure out how to show that to an audience. What we decided to do, we had kind of a rule as we talked about these characters and built up the show that we wouldn't protect any of them, either in terms of using sentimentality or in terms of hiding insights about them that were coming out the story that weren't flattering, particularly a character like Goodsir who you know an audience is really going to be behind. Talking with each other and Paul, and trying to understand where he is in the moment that he decides to this. He is someone who has always looked to both the natural world and to relationships, human relationships, as the things that have nourished his spirit. And to be in a position at the end of this where he's sacrificing himself in hopes of helping the few people in this group that he still feels are worth helping, or sacrificing himself for, but at the same time, we see into his head what he's imagining when he leaves this world, and it isn't people. And I find that heartbreaking.

 

As beautiful as those images are that we zoom in on as he's dying, it seems like a real tragedy, it feels like a real tragedy, that he's in his last moments remembering the natural world as opposed of people he's known. To us, that said everything we wanted to say about where he ends in his arc, and it's a pretty dark place."

Starvation Cove

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Image via AMC

One of the most haunting moments in a supremely haunting hour of television arrives in the finale's last act, when we watch Crozier retrace the steps of the men he was forced to leave behind. Lady Silence senses Tuunbaq's death and goes to him, trying to revive the creature with a splash of water from her canteen, but he is long gone. Crozier, however, is still breathing and when she cannot break his chains, Lady Silence cuts off his hand and hauls him off for recovery. Together, the two of them follow in the footsteps of Crozier's men, finding nothing but devastation and death at each camp.

They're all heartbreaking (poor, poor Jobson; Crozier's most loyal man died believing his captain abandoned him), but the image that really gets under your skin is the sight of Edward; dead-eyed but still alive, with chains strung through his face. It's a rich, mysterious moment that Hugh explains was pulled from actual Inuit testimony.

"It's interesting, we've gotten so many social media questions about that imagery. And we debated how much to reveal, but I think I want to put point on it just because people have been so mesmerized by it. That imagery actually came from a testimony about discovering one of the men from the expedition, his corpse, with chains around his face, linked to his ear. I don't remember when we found it in the writer's room, but I remember all of us just sitting there quiet, I think each of us were imagining that in our heads and we knew we had to bring that into the story. We wanted to bring as much Inuit testimony into the story as possible, but especially that one, which was so indelibly haunting and full of ambiguity."

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Image via AMC

Kajganich added,

"It was a mother and a son, an Inuit woman and her son, who found that particular tent with a body in it that they had said he was rigged up with a set of chains that were in his face and that if you pulled one of them, it pulled his head up slowly. They had no explanation for it, and the people interviewing them had no explanation for it."

Kajganich also explained what they wanted the audience to take away from those final shots of Starvation Cove -- the name given to that poisoned, disease-ridden, and yes, cannibalized camp where the bulk of the men from the Franklin expedition died.

"We decided in the long arc of the last few episodes, in terms of finding out the fate of all these men, that if we were going to stay with Crozier and his experience of those last months and then have him walk behind the other groups and sort of follow their trail until we discovered all of them have died, because the bulk of those deaths in the other camp, the bulk of the men in the show, since that would be offscreen, we wanted to make sure that when Crozier finally catches up to the last camp at Starvation Cove, that we see visually what the tenor of those last weeks and months must of have been for them.

 

Between lead poisoning, starvation, and scurvy and every other ailment that was on their heels, that they probably descended into some pretty dark places. There certainly was evidence of cannibalism in that last big camp. So we wanted to show that as well, but we didn't want to prioritize any one thing. We wanted it to be a collection of images that would leave you with enough answers to what those men probably went through but also a kind of, I don't know quite how to say it... a kind of holy ambiguity about it as well. Because I think one of thing that most people really connect with about the actual history expedition's demise is that we don't have many answers at all, at least not yet, and that begins to feel mystical somehow or mythical."

Hugh added one last thought on the sequence in Starvation Cove, suggesting audiences should pay special attention to the look Nive Nielsen delivers as Lady Silence surveys the chaotic violence of the scene.

"I think the shot of that sequence is actually the final shot of Lady Silence watching Crozier watching Edward. The look that Nive has in that moment, it's amazing. She just has this look of – her face is like, "And you call us "the other"? Look at what has happened to these men," and it's so powerful because it's not condemning, but it is a powerful statement about Western patriarchy."

Crozier's Final Moments

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Image via AMC

Finally, we say goodbye to Crozier, a Captain who's lost all his men, even if the deck was stacked against them in an ungodly fashion. With no men left to lead, Crozier follow Lady Silence, aka Silna, in an Inuit camp, where he finds a new life. Silna is cast out on her own to pay the price for losing Tuunbaq, and unable to follow her, Crozier settles down among the community, ensuring that the next team of explorers is quickly turned away with tales of The Terror's demise. Ultimately, we leave Crozier at a seal hole, simply sitting, quiet, with a young boy lazily resting on his side. He could not return home, but he made a new one.

Discussing where they wanted to leave Crozier and the series in its final moments, Kajganich explained,

"We knew from the beginning that, like Dan's book, we very much loved the idea that Crozier survived in an unexpected way. Lady Silence, Silna, is asked at the end of the story to pay the bill for all of this, for all the kind of chaos and disruption that these men have brought with them and that Crozier upon hearing that, would have made the decision that going back [to England], he would only have been positioned as failure, and that failure would only be positioned as further evidence why a someone like Crozier could not be trusted with the equilibrium of the empire, if you will.

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Image via AMC

Kajganich also spoke a bit about how the ending diverges from Dan Simmons' book and why they opted to emit the romance between Crozier and Lady Silence while still maintaining Crozier's character arc.

Fairly early in the process in the writer's room, Soo came up with that image of leaving Crozier and leaving the season with Crozier at a seal hole as a way of articulating that Crozier's life was not going to be – this was not an exotic choice, this was not a mythical choice, this wasn't a heroic choice – his life was going to be very very hard. But the fact that he has a community that does not judge him in all the ways he was judged in all the ways he was judged back in England, and a community that trusts him enough – one of the reasons we wanted that boy with him at the end. In the book, that boy would be his son. In the book, Crozier becomes romantic partners with Lady Silence. We didn't want t go that route, we didn't want Lady Silence to serve any other arc in the show but her own. But we did think that child was important, because it shows the level of trust and comfort that they have with him at that point and we made sure to make the boy old enough that the audience would know not to understand that that's not his son, but just someone in the village in the community, who he was a friend with or some kind of mentor to. 

Finally, Hugh suggested that final moment was something of quiet reward for the audience after all the carnage and chaos of the hours before it.

"That last shot could be five minutes longer. I just think an audience would have sat there. It's so mesmerizing, especially the music and you feel like after everything we've been through, we've earned that moment with him. The quiet and still. It feels like a reward for an audience, or a moment of gratitude for the audience from David and I and everyone else."

And with that, a quiet note of gratitude, Hugh and Kajganich send off one of the best new series of the year, and one of the best horror series in ages. No doubt it's on people will be mulling over for a while.

For more on The Terror, be sure to check out the links below: