‘UnREAL’ Creators On The Season Finale: ‘The Gloves Are Off’

Warning: This article may contain spoilers for UnREAL.

UnREAL, which is described as “a behind-the-scenes look at the chaos surrounding the production of a dating competition program” on their IMDb page, will be airing their season finale on Monday night and fans of UnREAL hoping for happy endings may be getting what they want — or they may not. It all depends on how one interprets the response of UnREAL‘s co-creator, Sarah Gertrude Shapiro.

“Rachel gets everything she deserves and then some! You can interpret that however you want.”

Shapiro’s words are cryptic to say the least, but then that may be just the kind of taunting that has made UnREAL such a big hit in its first year. UnREAL isn’t just about satirizing hit reality shows like The Bachelor, although it does so with such ingenuity that stars like Lea Michele prefer the spoof to the original. UnREAL has also tackled some very sobering issues, such as eating disorders, prostitution, and suicide.

Shiri Appleby, who plays UnREAL‘s Rachel Goldberg, commented that she really enjoys playing an anti-hero and that UnREAL fans seem drawn to her.

“A lot of the feedback that we’ve got is that people are interested in seeing complicated women on screen.”

Constance Zimmer, known to UnREAL fans for playing Quinn King, agreed with Appleby’s assessment, but added that she feels it goes further than just portraying complicated women.

“[It’s] also flawed women, we don’t get to see that very often. People want more of it actually. I was worried … in the beginning, about [Quinn] being too hostile, but in watching the season and hearing people’s comments, I now know that I can go further with it.”

“The last couple years have opened the door to so much new stuff…these are all really unusual female characters,” added UnREAL showrunner Marti Noxon. “The floodgates have really opened for content and they see things like Transparent and Orange Is the New Black working and [shows] where women aren’t playing those conventional roles. It’s a new day.”

Back to the upcoming finale, UnREAL fans are really eager to see how Rachel’s love triangle will play out, especially since the last word was that she had decided to live with Jeremy.

“Jeremy is more interesting than he’s been shown before,” said Josh Kelly (Jeremy Caner). “Jeremy has nowhere to go but up, Adam has nowhere to go but down. Jeremy will always be the better guy and will continue to get better.”

Even as Rachel has seemingly made her decision to stay with Jeremy, she is still tempted by Freddie Stroma (Adam Cromwell) and his offer to take his plane off to destinations unknown.

“Hey, #TeamJeremy, Jeremy cheated. Just saying,” said Stroma. “#TeamAdam is going to give [Rachel] excitement whereas #TeamJeremy is just going to get kind of boring. He’s not going to let her spread her wings.”

It seems as though UnREAL‘s season finale is going to be pretty explosive, perhaps more so than the reality shows it tends to spoof so accurately.

“We’ve [already] had many twists and turns, [but] I think we’re really going to deliver a few more gut punches in this episode,” Noxon said of tomorrow night’s finale.

“The gloves are off, from everybody,” Ms. Zimmer added.

Lifetime will air the entire season of UnREAL on Monday August 3, beginning at 12:00 p.m. eastern, leading up to UnREAL’s finale at 10:00 p.m. eastern.

[Featured image courtesy of Lifetime/UnREAL]