Grimm Finale: EPs Explain All Those Deaths, Rosalee's Skipped

Warning: The following post contains major spoilers from the Grimm series finale.

The problem with ending previous seasons of Grimm with huge, cliffhanging episodes, showrunnersJames Kouf and David Greenwalt tell TVLine, is that the series finale then had to be even an even bigger deal than what had come before.

So what did the executive producers do? Killed them all, of course.

By “them,” we mean Nick’s friends. And by “all,” we mean Renard, Adalind, Rosalee, Monroe and Trubel, who died in quick succession in Friday’s series finale. And just when Nick was so bereft that he was about to hand the magic stick to Zerstörer in exchange for getting his friends back, Nick’s mom, Kelly, and his aunt, Marie, showed up to help him and Trubel defeat the devil. (Make sure you read our full recap, as well as our breakdown of those surprise cameos, for more on exactly what happened.)

We got a hold of Greenwalt and Kouf and peppered them with Grimm questions. Which cast member couldn’t make it back for the episode? Who was most emotional on set? What line did they just know wasn’t going to make it into the hour? And what became of the characters we didn’t see in the flashforward? Read on as the supernatural series’ EPs give us the lowdown on the finale.

TVLINE | How did you come to the idea that, even though things were going to be reversed later, everyone had to die except for Nick?
KOUF | That’s the logic of it. Because if you’re fighting great evil and great evil wants something that is going to destroy the world and he’s got to convince you that it’s worth it to give this to him so he can destroy the world, you’ve got to take a lot away from [Nick].
GREENWALT | Everything! So that decides a lot of the plot, if you go to that emotional space. And it’s our biggest ending ever. We’ve had previous giant endings to the show every season, so we had to go all the way.

TVLINE | This is a much different episode for David Giuntoli than the usual Grimm script.
KOUF | Oh yeah. David had to pace himself. He couldn’t blow it all on the first one or two, because it was really so sad. So it’s a fine-tuned response to every single one where he, at the end, comes unglued.

TVLINE | The Monroe death seemed to break Nick a little more than all the others.
GREENWALT | That’s right. It was designed. You’re sort of killing them in some emotional order, but for sure, Monroe is the most devastating one in terms of if you’ve been watching the show for six years. Losing the women you love and your best friend and your partner and on and on… I just wanted to say, David Giuntoli, that’s a heck of a performance. As an actor, you look at that, and what you said: In about 25 pages, everybody’s dead. And quickly. He had to keep coming up with different ways to face that and play that. It was quite amazing.
KOUF | Yeah, he really brought it.

TVLINE | The whole season has been filled with callbacks to previous seasons. Were there any that you weren’t able to make happen but wanted to?
KOUF | Yeah, Bud.
GREENWALT | Bud!
KOUF | But we couldn’t get him in.
GREENWALT | The keen-eyed viewers will notice Sgt. Franco is dead on the floor at the beginning. One of our script supervisors, [P.R. Tooke], is also dead on the floor in there. That’s just an inside thing. We couldn’t do — as Jim always says, we had 42 minutes to tell a story. You couldn’t do everything.

TVLINE | Was there any member of the cast that was more of an emotional mess when you were shooting?
KOUF | Silas [Weir Mitchell].
GREENWALT | Maybe Silas. He’s a very emotional being, it’s no wonder he’s such a hell of an actor.

TVLINE | Diana goes pretty willingly with Zerstörer when he comes to get her, which is a change from her fear earlier in the episode. At that point, does she have any inkling of what’s going to happen regarding the rewind? It seems like an abrupt difference in her reaction to him.
GREENWALT | She’s under his thrall. And there is a line that I always knew we would cut, and we should have cut, but there is a line [Laughs] where she looks at Renard, who’s dying, and she says, regarding her and Zerstörer, “We’re going to have a hundred babies!” [Laughs] We thought that might have been a bridge too far, and it certainly was.
KOUF | But all of this was to show that she was so much under his thrall that she had no idea what she was in for.
GREENWALT | Obviously not.

TVLINE | So as it turns out, the only time we saw Rosalee visibly pregnant was —
GREENWALT | —just the one dream sequence [earlier in the season], which I thought was very satisfying. We couldn’t have any more babies. That show had more babies than a nursery!

TVLINE | But as we see in the flashforward, we see that Diana and Kelly are carrying on the Grimm work, and they mention that Adalind and Nick — as well as the triplets — are involved. What can you tell me about how everyone else ended up?
KOUF | They’re all just one big, happy family, fighting evil together.
GREENWALT |They’re all fighting the good fight, in one way or the other. Trubel’s definitely out there. She’s “have sword, will travel” for sure.

Don’t forget, Grimmsters: I’ll be talking all things finale on TVLine’s Facebook Live at 9:30/8:30c! Click the photo on the right to join me!