SPOILER ALERT: This post spoils the third season of My Life With The Walter Boys now streaming on Netflix.
Another season of Netflix’s My Life With the Walter Boys has come and gone, bringing about a cliffhanger more extreme than that of Season 2.
Just as Alex got into saddle bronc-riding last season, Cole ups the ante of his hobbies by delving into drag racing, influenced by Mac (Chad Rooker) who initially comes into Tony’s Auto Shop to get one of his cars fixed up. Cole eventually buys his own car, a 1981 Z28 Camaro with a 350 four carburetor to fix up and race, but he makes an enemy on the track one night, resulting in a terrible accident.
It’s not even during the race that Cole’s car takes a tumble, but because he decides to forfeit it and therefore takes an opportunity away from Danvers Stacey (Jedidiah Goodacre), an opponent Cole has met before, who is trying to win the prize money and advance in his career. Stacey, who has lost to Cole previously, follows Cole home because Cole’s decided that he wants to see Jackie and make things right after they’ve broken up. Stacey runs Cole off the road, and the yellow Chevy Camaro the elder Walter brother has fixed up flips in the air before crashing.
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“It was always really how we wanted to end this season. We like to throw everything up in the air in this show. We like to subvert expectations and make people desperate for more and make people shout at their screen because they can’t believe it’s over,” showrunner Melanie Halsall told Deadline in an interview before premiere week. “So yes, obviously we wanted a big, impactful ending, and it felt like the right place to leave the characters for now after everything that’s happened in this season.”
Moments before the accident, Jackie kisses Elliot (Naveen Paddock), a childhood friend from her old life in New York, at a party she has been planning for the opening of the community space she’s been working hard to put together for Silver Falls students all season. Elliot was teased as trouble when Uncle Richard (Alex Quijano) first brought him to Colorado as his intern in the third episode, and Olivia Rodrigo’s “Bad Idea, Right?” played. He has challenged Cole for Jackie’s attention since he arrived.
“We saw it in Season 2, she really wanted to be a good member of the of the Silver Falls community. By the time we meet Elliot, she and Cole are together. They’re committed, and they’re living in their bliss. [He’s] a reminder of who she used to be and where she used to be,” Halsall said. “It felt like the right time to put that curveball into the into the world, and it does not hurt that it helps Cole and Alex bond brilliantly about how much they don’t like him, and it also doesn’t help that he’s suave and cool and good-looking and can be a little bit manipulative, a little bit tricksy.”
In the below interview, Halsall addresses more aspects of the finale ending, how Danny (Connor Stanhope) and Erin’s (Alisha Newton) relationship pans out this season and the arrival of Lee (Myles Perez) and Isaac’s (Isaac Arellanes) mother Hannah, nomadic sister of George Walter (Marc Blucas), who recovers from a stroke that he had at the end of Season 2.
DEADLINE: In the finale, Jackie’s planned this whole party in the speakeasy, and it really brought me back to the pilot of Season 1, which, unfortunately, was when she found out about her parents’ car accident. Was that Dua Lipa song connection with “Hallucinate” in the pilot and the “Don’t Star Now” Season 3 needledrop purposeful for how you bring that full circle and remind people of what happened to her at the beginning of the show?
MELANIE HALSALL: It’s absolutely deliberate. The piling on of those different emotions for her is something we really wanted to explore. We wanted to make it as impactful as possible, of course, and as shocking as possible. Not just in what happens, but in what it means for Jackie and for all of us.
DEADLINE: What made you want to introduce Elliot this season? Of course, he’s a new romantic interest for Jackie, but I feel like he pushes Cole’s buttons because he’s everything Cole isn’t, and he also provides opportunities for Cole and Alex to bond over how annoyed they are with him. How did you also want to expand the plot with him?
HALSALL: He represents everything Jackie’s left behind, everything she used to have. He really is from her old world, and as we make clear, he’s known her since she was a child. So, in a different world, if things had panned out differently for Jackie, her world would be full of Elliots. That’s not necessarily who she would be with, but definitely she would be in that world. So we felt it would be really interesting to contrast that with the world she’s in now, especially as a young woman who’s really coming to terms with what’s happened to her before, and she’s embraced Silver Falls.
It adds a little threesome of conflict. He makes Cole feel insecure because Cole’s never going to have that easy confidence of someone who’s uber-privileged from New York. As confident, as brilliant as Cole is, someone like Elliot just really gets under his skin. So it just throws all those wonderful conflicts into our world.
DEADLINE: Cole is doing such a good job committing to Jackie, despite questions from his friends and pressure from Uncle Richard. Why did you want to have him push her away and be prompted by Richard and Elliot to doubt himself and go back to his old ways as the season takes a turn in the second half?
HALSALL: I think you hit the nail on the head there. Cole’s always been quite insecure. He had his whole identity ripped away from him when he could no longer play football, and he we’ve seen him before. He goes off the rails when things don’t quite go his way. He doesn’t quite know how to articulate his emotions or his feelings or his worries or his concerns, and I think being with Jackie at the beginning of this season, of Season 3, allows him to become more vulnerable. It allows him allows him to strip away some of that shell that he’s built around himself because the whole bad boy thing is a complete act.
I’ve said this before: Cole is one of our most honorable characters, and it really is a self-preservation thing. It really is a defense mechanism, but so without that, and with him being so open and vulnerable now that he’s with Jackie, he’s absolutely ripe for Richard and Elliot and other people to kind of get under his skin and make him feel not worthy because deep down, he actually believes that.
He’s never really believed he’s been worthy of Jackie. I think there’s probably an element of, he stepped back and let Alex take first position, as it were, but let them let them have that relationship because he didn’t think he was ever going to be good enough for Jackie, and so when they say the things that they say to him, he believes them. He genuinely believes them. And he knows he can’t, he doesn’t want to break up with her really. So, the only way he can do it is by pushing her away.
By pretending to her that he’s become the boy that she thought he was when she first met him, it’s not just to save Jackie. I think it’s also to save him. I think he’s deep down terrified of being hurt as well, terrified of her leaving for an Elliot type, leaving for college and never returning. I know he genuinely cares about that. He doesn’t think he can ever provide her the life that someone like an Elliot or someone from her old world would do, and so he’s letting her go.
DEADLINE: How did you want to go about Jackie losing herself in Cole, as she says, and her conflict of identity? Last season, she was really feeling at home in Silver Falls, and it comes up in Season 3 when she’s defending her hometown. Was it tricky to have her go in a different direction of letting a grade slip and cutting class while positioning Cole as a better influence on her?
HALSALL: It’s very relatable, isn’t it? People do lose themselves in other people in love, especially when we’re young, and when it’s new. [Jackie]’s always been quite tightly wound, quite tightly wrapped up, and so has Cole. Cole’s had this shell around himself as well, like I said earlier, and so they both allow each other to remove these layers of protection that they both had, and in Jackie that manifests itself, because she protects herself by writing her lists, and by being perfect and by making sure she’s top of the class and she takes on all these extracurriculars and she’s just a really good girl.
I think living in the bliss with Cole’s allowed her to relax that little bit, which I don’t think is necessarily a bad thing. And then when it tips into not being a great thing, that’s when people start to notice. And I think she probably would say that she’d also started to notice, and that actually there might be a situation in which that, although Cole is at this point in time in this season, who she thinks the love is the love of her life, you have to learn not to lose yourself in that person. That sometimes can be a bit difficult. I think it’s about her growth and her learning and her character development that she goes through all this. She’ll need to go through a lot to come back to who she is.
DEADLINE: For Alex’s ending, he’s quit Hartford’s. He has that beautiful white horse to tame. How did those scenes work with the horse? And then, with the Kylie of it all that I’m sure viewers have been wanting since day one, how did you want to steer it a little bit more in that direction?
HALSALL: Ashby’s great with horses. He loves horses, and he works really, really hard. He works with a trainer and horse wranglers here. So he’s very comfortable around horses. He is brilliant in those scenes. Of course, there are people here to help with that, but he’s very comfortable and also very up for anything. He really is.
And the Kylie of it all, Kylie’s been in love with Alex since they were kids. I think for Alex, it’s seeing this person that is always taken for granted. We’ve seen him take her for granted over and over and over again, that poor girl. And then someone else takes an interest in her, and suddenly he sees her, and I mean, time will tell if that’s sincere or not, I think, because Alex falls in love quite easily. Kylie’s been in front of him all this time, and now she’s not, which is when he finally sees her.
DEADLINE: He has history with Blake, and she never really sided with him and kept saying like, you need to fit in at Hartford’s, you need to fit this mold of behavior that’s kind of toxic. How did you want to explore that in the show and deem it not the right place for Alex?
HALSALL: Again, hopefully it comes across as relatable, that we think something’s going to be a certain way, and then it turns out to be something else. Alex thinks that this rodeo thing is the answer to his problems, and he’s always wanted to be cool, and he loves horses, and he loves rodeo, but then it turns out that this world he enters isn’t the world he thought it was going to be, and he has to sacrifice a lot to be in it. A lot of that is his self-esteem.
It’s quite relatable that we start doing something at a certain level and realize that, actually, maybe that we weren’t cut out for that level. Maybe we’re great at something on a different level. I think it’s quite mature to realize that and to remove yourself from that situation if that’s [what it] needs to be. It doesn’t mean you’re giving up necessarily,
There’s pros and cons to keep going and keep trying, there’s also advantages and pros and cons to thinking, ‘I’m going to do something different.’
DEADLINE: Do you have an idea of how many more seasons the show would run? I’m assuming you’re working on Season 4 right now, but how, in the grand scheme of things, do you see things playing out not just for this big love triangle, but the Walter family as a whole? There are some family members that might leave for next season: Nathan, Will, and Haley… Now that you have three seasons under your belt, how do you feel?
HALSALL: Well, I think I’ve always felt that this show could expand exponentially. We’ve got so many fantastic characters, all of whom I feel like are individuals and can have interesting stories to tell that we can explore. Our core triangle, or our core trio, can go in so many different directions and different places. So, in my head, I think we could continue to tell these stories for a long time. I think the family dynamic and the kids’ dynamic is absolutely something that we could continue to explore.
DEADLINE: You introduced Lee and Isaac’s mother (Erin Karpluk) as well this season. Did you ever think about having them move in with her, having her stay in Silver Falls, or was it always a plan to just highlight George and Katherine’s parenting?
HALSALL: It’s really who the character is, of Hannah, and I think unfortunately she’s just not really in a place where she could be a full-time mom. That character doesn’t feel that that’s her role. That she can do that. It’s a tricky job. And Katherine and George embody it so brilliantly, but it’s not for everybody, and that’s really tragic and difficult for everybody involved.
I loved telling that story. I really loved the character of Hannah, and, again, hopefully, it’s quite relatable that she embodies those difficulties of being a parent of teenagers. It’s not always easy, and people have their own demons and their own problems and their own issues that that they can’t always overcome. That’s very real, I think. That was always the way that story was going to play out because that’s who the character is.
DEADLINE: Danny and Erin’s plotline this season feels like a foil to Jackie and Cole’s relationship with college decisions looming, but not sacrificing individual dreams for a relationship.
HALSALL: It’s showcasing all the different ways we live our lives, isn’t it? And all the different ways that relationships influence us and affect us and make us become different people. What we’re often doing in this show is exploring those things through the themes of romance and coming of age and growing up.
I love Danny and Erin. They’re such a loving, mature couple. They’re fairly low drama because they’re so well-matched, but they also are a little bit lost in each other in different ways. All our characters are learning and growing from each other in different ways. It should be interesting.
