‘Under the Bridge’ EPs Unpack the Finale and Critique the True Crime Genre: ‘We Did Not Want to Make Copaganda’
variety.comSelome Hailu SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains spoilers for “Mercy Alone,” the series finale of “Under the Bridge.” “Under the Bridge” doesn’t have “a traditional ending,” says showrunner Samir Mehta.
After the penultimate episode of the true crime limited series saw Warren Glowatski (Javon Walton) sentenced to life in prison for his involvement in the 1997 murder of Reena Virk (Vritika Gupta), in the finale, the white, wealthy Kelly Ellard (Izzy G) received only a five-year sentence despite having been the ringleader. “Justice wasn’t really served in real life, so it couldn’t ever be that type of story where you get to the finale and the bad people go away,” Mehta says.
Instead, the episode focuses more on the characters “finding their best shot at peace and finding a little bit of grace in their suffering.
Exhibiting a bit of mercy isn’t ever going to make the horror go away, but might allow movement towards a better place.” Before Kelly’s trial, Reena’s mother Suman (Archie Panjabi) visits Warren in prison to begin making amends, saying it’s “the only way out” of her suffering. “Suman’s radical forgiveness of Warren needed to be the centerpiece of the episode,” says series creator Quinn Shepard. “It became about stopping cycles of violence through things that really happened.
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