Tag: Clarity

Warning: Contains SPOILERS for Found season 2, episode 9.Found kicked off its winter premiere with numerous revelations that successfully set the stage for the latter half of season 2. “Missing While Targeted” sees Dhan rushed to the hospital after he is shot during an unconventional case. In a heartbreaking moment, Ethan asks Gabi to leave the waiting room, blaming her for his husband’s critical condition and the rift in their marriage. The episode ends with Sir and Trent having a standoff in the latter’s home, followed by the sound of a gun being fired.

Both incidents are shocking enough to leave fans reeling, but another bomb is dropped earlier in the hour. After meeting face to face at the school, Sir tells Gabi that he knows what happened to Margaret’s son. The crisis manager is knocked out by an unseen assailant, revealing that someone is working alongside Sir. While Margaret has yet to find a lead on Jamie since he disappeared thirteen years prior, showrunner Nkechi Okoro Carroll promises that season 2 will answer one of Found’s longest-running mysteries.

ScreenRant interviews Okoro Carroll about the winter premiere’s multiple cliffhangers, how Trent will respond to Sir’s claims about his father, and what Margaret’s search for clarity will look like in Found season 2.

Dhan’s Near-Death Experience Shows The Dangerous Nature Of M&A’s Work

“They are regular citizens. They are not cops. They didn’t go to special training to be these sort of vigilantes of sorts.”

ScreenRant: So much went down in the winter premiere, but let’s start with the biggest shockers. Dhan gets shot, and we also hear a gun go off during Trent and Sir’s standoff. What made you decide to put both cliffhangers in the same episode?

Nkechi Okoro Carroll: When we started the writers’ room, we didn’t have our airing schedule yet. So I was like, “Well, shoot. Any of these episodes could end up being our winter finale and our winter premiere.” So literally, that’s why every episode just kind of goes like gangbusters [laughs]. It’s been a lot of fun. I’m like, “We’re just writing every episode like it’s a mid-season finale.” And so the storyline dictated those two things coming to a head in the same episode, and it ended up being our winter premiere, which is great.

Given the journey that Gabi is on this season and this search for atonement and feeling like she needs to pay for, not only what she did to Sir, but the havoc she’s wreaked in everyone’s lives as a result of it. Sir has pretty much touched every member of M&A and those closest to her in some way, shape, or form now that he’s just out wild and loose, just out there unhinged. There needed to be real consequences to that. There needed to be real escalation to that, and that’s kind of what we built to in the school with Gabi and Sir, and the case that he brings her attention to that has sort of a very personal connection to Trent.

And that will have repercussions through the whole back half of the season. So that had to sort of culminate in a “Sir isn’t a man of inactive words.” If he promises something, he’s going to deliver on it. And so that sort of spoke to why that cliffhanger had to happen that way, where the only two way for these two men to meet had to be like that. It had to be gunpoint to gunpoint, two mirror images of each other sort of “law and order” versus “lives by his own rules,” because in his mind what he’s doing isn’t wrong. In his mind, he’s saving people from their lives from Sir’s perspective. And so he’s sort of the opposite of what Trent is.

It felt like they could only meet in that kind of standoff. And then for Dhan’s, the build of that is the reminder that these cases they work on are dangerous. They are regular citizens. They are not cops. They didn’t go to special training to be these sort of vigilantes of sorts. They have things in their background that make them good for the job, but at the end of the day, they have chosen to turn their trauma into purpose. They have chosen to give of themselves without the superhero-Iron-Man-suit and all the things.

They’re just regular humans out there trying to save lives and that comes with an inherent danger. It felt like it was the right time to also remind the audience of that because if Gabi is sort of facing the toughest moments of her life, what does that look like if her team are not at their best? If her team are sort of breaking apart and falling apart by the wayside? That was how everything built to where it did for that moment in the episode.

Trent And Sir Both Believe They’re Protecting Gabi

“One is a more distorted version, but they both operate from this place of Gabi holding a very important place in their life.”

The standoff between Sir and Trent was interesting. Trent is usually trying to protect Gabi from Sir, but now Sir is trying to protect Gabi from being arrested by Trent. Was that intentional?

Nkechi Okoro Carroll: Yes, because these are two men who both think they’re protecting Gabi to a certain extent. They just have very different definitions of what that looks like. And so, for Trent, part of what he believes in is the process. Part of what he believes in is, “You pay the price for the crime, the rehabilitation happens,” the whole thing. That’s why he’s a cop. He’s a third-generation cop. He believes in the system, flawed as it is. And from Sir’s perspective, this has been the filter he sees everything through that he does.

Even taking Gabi as a teenager and locking her in that farmhouse, in his mind, he was saving her from a home-life that was not worthy of her. Who is he to decide? And so in this moment, it was the same thing of, you have them at a standoff, and the audacity for him, as the person who has tormented and haunted her for 20 years to be standing there lecturing to Trent about being Gabi’s protector and being like, “You need to back off arresting her,” was just too juicy to pass up. One is a more distorted version, but they both operate from this place of Gabi holding a very important place in their life.

Because of that, things sometimes get distorted for both of them. Trent’s anger is the flip side to how much he loves Gabi and feels betrayed that she didn’t trust him enough to tell him. And is she really the woman he fell in love with, if she’s capable of doing this? And because he can’t reconcile those feelings, it’s manifested as anger and wanting to make sure she pays for her crime and all the things. Whereas, for Sir, he sees her as the perfect companion, and once he’s locked in on that, nothing is going to take that from him, even if it takes a lifetime to get it.

Could Trent’s belief system be affected now that Sir has unearthed this information about his father?

Nkechi Okoro Carroll: Perhaps, perhaps. But again, Trent is also aware that the system he believes in is a system that needs repairing. He is not naive. And so, for every good cop that exists, that’s a version of him, he is fully aware of the cops that kind of manipulate the system. It’s why he has such a disregard for authority. It’s why he’s such a pain in the a*s for his captain. And quite frankly, it’s why he hasn’t ascended higher as a police officer.

And so everything about his interactions with M&A, everything about Sir, everything about the way his father is revered as an officer, and his legacy through that, all of that informs sort of who he is as a person and how he feels about law and order and its ability to do the thing it’s supposed to do, which is reform society.

This thing with his dad is probably the most epic version of a case that he’ll take personally, but we’ll find that his need to actually know exactly what happened is going to drive a lot of his actions over the back half of the season. He can’t let Sir have the victory of holding this over his head, even if his instinct is telling him maybe Sir has it wrong, or maybe he doesn’t know the full story, or maybe he does, but he’s not going to be able to just sleep at night knowing that’s out there, and that Sir also has that to constantly dangle over his head.

Gabi Will Be Honest With Margaret About Sir’s Declaration In Found Season 2

“What I can tease is that Margaret’s most personal case, Jamie, is going to take front and center.”

Sir claims to know what happened to Margaret’s son. Is Gabi going to be hesitant to share that information with her?

Nkechi Okoro Carroll: What I can definitely tell you is Gabi has learned her lesson about withholding stuff from her M&A team. Gabi has learned her lesson, and it’s actually something we will hear her say repeatedly, especially when people start to question the sharing of information, and she’s like, “No. Learn from my mistake. We look at this stuff as a team, we reveal stuff to each other as a team,” because she didn’t do that and it almost destroyed them.

So, yes, Gabi is not inclined to keep anything from Margaret. The real question is going to be, which I’m excited to sort of take viewers on the journey of is, “How far is Margaret willing to go to get answers?” What I can tease is that Margaret’s most personal case, Jamie, is going to take front and center in the back half of the season.

It’s something that we will be taking this ride on both in present-day and in flashbacks with Margaret and her family as we try to answer the question of what happened, who was responsible, and how do all these pieces of the puzzle link together? So what I can promise our fans and our viewers is that that is going to get answered in the back half of this season. Buckle up, it’s going to be a ride. I always say, “Have some Kleenex, have some wine, and a cozy comforter, and you’re ready to watch Found.”

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About NBC’s Found Season 2

Created by Nkechi Okoro Carroll

In any given year, more than 600,000 people are reported missing in the U.S. More than half that number are people of color that the country seems to forget about. Public relations specialist Gabi Mosely (series star and producer Shanola Hampton), who was once herself one of those forgotten ones, and her crisis management team make sure there is always someone looking out for the missing.

Gabi, however, has a chilling secret: In the midst of grief, she imprisoned her childhood kidnapper, Sir (Mark-Paul Gosselaar). Now Sir has escaped and is on the loose, and her biggest secret is now her biggest threat.

Check out our other interviews with the Found season 2 cast:

Found season 2 airs Thursdays at 10 p.m. ET/PT on NBC.