Warning: MAJOR spoilers for the finale of We Were Liars!We Were Liarsseason 1, which isstreaming now on Prime Video, delivers a heartbreaking and shocking finale. While it differs slightly from the book of the same name that it is based on, author E. Lockhart praised the decision thatshowrunners Julie Plec and Carina Adly MacKenziepushed for.
Thestory ofWe Were Liarsfollows a teenage girl who is suffering from selective memory loss after a traumatic accident. Over the course of a summer, she works to put the pieces together, despite her family and friends refusing to come out and tell her what happened. The emotional season 1 finale reveals the truth about everything.
ScreenRantspoke with E. Lockhart, Julie Plec, and Carina Adly MacKenzie to break down theWe Were Liarsfinale, which is sure to leave a lot of viewers with their jaws on the floor, especially if they have not read the book and do not know what is coming. It might veer from the normal path of television structure, but for good reason, and they explained why.
The We Were Liars Series Ending Expands On The Ending Of The Book
TheWe Were Liarsseason 1 finale expands on the ending of the book. While Cadence still discovers the truth about that fateful night, learning that the Liars are the ones who set fire to the family home and she was the only survivor, meaning her friends have not really been with her all Summer, she gets a chance to say goodbye to them individually. The showrunners knew that this structure would not be normal for a series, but they felt it needed to be done. “The decision to have each Liar get their moment in the proverbial sun to say goodbye is a decision that flies totally in the face of television structure,” Plec admitted.
“Yeah, there’s a hundred endings,” MacKenzie added. “We end, and then we end again. And then we end again, and we end again,” Plec laughed. “Carina and I, as fans of the book and fans of these people we had made the show with and these characters that evolved out of those performances,knew on a fundamental level that we were doing something that was structurally not really all that savvy.”
We just needed those scenes. We needed them as writers. We needed them for the actors and the characters. We definitely needed them for the audience.
“When you look at it, no one’s giving us the Nobel Prize or the Pulitzer or whatever. But we just needed those scenes. We needed them as writers. We needed them for the actors and the characters. We definitely needed them for the audience,” Plec argued passionately. “We even trimmed them down because they were twice as long. That’s how much we needed them. And we don’t care what anybody says. The audience will be glad that they’re there.”
Allowing Cadence To Say Goodbye To The Liars Individually Adds To The Story
“The Showrunners Really Pushed For That. And They Were Completely Right”
E. Lockhart admitted that this was the right choice to make for the series adaptation of her book. “The showrunners really pushed for that. And they were completely right becausein a TV show, you’ve spent so much more time getting to know these characters,” she detailed. “It’s eight hours that you’ve spent with them by the time you get to the end.”
It isn’t just Cadence that audiences have connected with, it is all of the characters, so it was important for the audience to get to say goodbye as well. “The characters of Gat and Johnny and Mirran, the Liars of the title, are deeper and more complicated and have bigger secrets and more individual storylines than they do in the book,” Lockhart explained. “So they really each needed their own goodbye and one that was specific to their character and their character’s arc.”
Check out our otherWe Were Liarsinterviews here:
All episodes ofWe Were Liarsare now available to stream on Prime Video.
We Were Liars
Cast
We Were Liars follows 17-year-old Cadence as she returns to Beechwood Island, seeking answers about a mysterious accident that left her with amnesia. The series explores her journey amid the private summer gathering of the Sinclair family, where secrets are guarded by friends and past love.
