TVLINE | It was wonderful to finally see Kat and Elliot get engaged, but I’m sure the fans would have enjoyed a wedding as well. Did you ever consider taking us all the way down the aisle with them?
CLARKE | We considered everything when we first realized it was going to be a finale finale, but I think Jacob’s wedding bizarrely outweighed Kat and Elliot’s in that it gave us the most closure about what’s going happen with all of these families moving forward. All three founding families are part of that wedding, and they’re finally all at peace with one another.
We really did explore this season, in the ’70s and ’80s, that there was this really beautiful time when it was Vic, Tessa, Dylan, Colton, and Evelyn around the kitchen table having kitchen parties — and then it all fell apart. To see these founding families all come together for this wedding was a really important thing for us to leave the audience with. There’s peace there. There’s love there. There’s a lovely foundation again, and that’s a result of Jacob and Abby getting married. So he was kind of “The One” all over again. He was the one that saved the family and made it able to exist, and then he was the one who brought all the feuding families together.
TVLINE | And what can you say about what the future holds for Alice and Max now that they’ve expressed how they feel about one another?
CONKIE |It’s hard to know at that age. Have you heard of a turkey dump?
CLARKE | It’s this idea that high school sweethearts leave for college, they sort of go off in their own worlds, then they come back for Thanksgiving and someone gets dumped because there’s been this thing of freedom in the college life.
CONKIE | There could be a turkey dump in her future, who knows!
CLARKE | What’s nice is, regardless of the fact that they kissed, regardless of the fact that they do end up expressing this desire for one another, Alice chooses herself. She goes to New York. We were very careful at the wedding not to have them coupled up. They’re on either sides of the aisle, and yes they share a really lovely smile, but it’s up to the audience to interpret whether that means they’re together or it means they’ve just kept in touch. They were really good friends, and I think Max says it best: “I’ll be wherever you need me to be, but the road you’re on leads to you, not me.” I think that’s exactly how they go into college. He’s in Toronto and she’s in New York. If their roads them back to each other, great, but if they don’t, OK.
CONKIE | I think it would be very cool if they were together and living at Lingermore eventually.