R.J. Decker ended season 1 with a shocking death — despite the show not being renewed for more episodes yet.
During the Tuesday, April 28, episode Emi’s (Jaina Lee Ortiz) father, Victor (David Zayas), was killed after being put behind bars. The shocking twist wrapped up the first season while teasing what R.J. (Scott Speedman) could be up against in a second season.
“Victor was constructed to go away in a ninth and final episode, just as we kind of looked — I don’t know when we settled on it. It was probably sort of the midpoint of our season that it felt appropriate,” creator Robert Doherty told TV Insider. “It felt like a good punctuation mark at the end of our various first-season arcs.”
Doherty hoped the death would “open” the show up to “some bigger things.”
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“I will cop to having second thoughts after we cast David Zayas, who is just a remarkable person and actor,” he continued. “He was just so much fun to watch and interact with. In my book, he’s TV royalty. Ultimately, though, we had to say goodbye to Victor, but we’ll miss David.”
While Doherty didn’t reveal who killed off Victor, he hinted at the fallout, adding, “I think the people closest to him will have to find themselves under a magnifying glass. I think Emi in our finale was part of a cabal to bring him down. If you look at that from another angle, it could look like she was acting against him, and maybe this was something. Certain parties may come to believe that Emi had a hand in what happened.”
He continued: “Beyond that, as we mentioned in the finale, Victor copped to being a shady politician, which I hear is a very rare thing. But he confessed to Emi that he maintains relationships with a lot of people that on paper he should not, but he has decided that it’s for the greater good. It makes Fort Lauderdale a safer city and Florida a safer state. So we’ll have to pick our way through some of those people, too. That’ll take some digging for sure. Who was Victor in bed with, and could they have done him in?”
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Doherty noted that the onscreen murder “has to change things.”
“I think dramatically that’s a good thing for us as writers. It’s good to have to sort of wend your way through that sort of surprise and that sort of tragedy. It will disrupt the Emi and RJ relationship, not just because each can, will, and should be looked at as suspects, but Emi’s going to carry some guilt,” he detailed. “She didn’t see any of this coming, but the truth is she teed him up for an arrest, and the arrest made him a vulnerability to someone else, someone to be identified.”
Season 2 would also follow Emi’s reaction. “As brilliant as Emi is, it’s the one thing she couldn’t have seen coming, and she’ll have to sort of pick her way through that,” he detailed. “And I think that will make it harder to be around RJ, at least in the short term. Not because she blames him, but because it’s hard to look at RJ and not sort of be reminded of the path that ultimately led to her dad getting gunned down in his home.”
R.J. Decker is streaming now on Hulu.
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