After another time jump, Jude got his diploma — he’s going to UCLA — while his now twentysomething siblings applauded in the audience, with a surprise companion in tow. (Bye, Wyatt! Hello again, Mat?!) The family then went to celebrate at home, where Brandon and his new-to-us girlfriend Eliza announced their engagement… and Stef and Lena got a call about fostering a new child!
Below, executive producer Joanna Johnson answers our burning questions about that surprise ending and previews the show’s three-episode summer event, which will introduce the upcoming Callie and Mariana-centric, Los Angeles-set spinoff.
TVLINE | The finale, especially those graduation flash-forwards, very much felt like a series finale. Was that intentional? Did you want to have that feeling of closure, even though there is more story that is going to be told?
We did, and then we also have a few things that we tease at the end of that to say, “Hey, come back, we’re not quite done.” We originally conceived that as the series finale, and then the network said, “Hey, we want to order some more episodes.” So we had to figure out what could be another finale. So I would say that we kind of have a couple different series finales. They wanted to give The Fosters a really important, special farewell, not just one episode. So we came up with this three-night special, and we were happy to do it.
You think there’s some tearjerker moments in Episode 19, but when you see these last three episodes… When we were in the table reads, everybody was just sobbing. It was pretty intense. So we’re going to have a really special three-episode arc and a real definitive series finale, but also the promise and hope that we’re going to see these people again. Because not only are we going to see Mariana and Callie in the spinoff, we want to see the whole family. So this family is not going away. We are going to continue to tell their stories.
