‘Walker’: Jared Padalecki & Anna Fricke On Finding Closure In Series Finale Despite Premature Cancellation
Walker Rebecca Brenneman/The CW
SPOILER ALERT! This post contains details from the series finale of The CW‘s Walker.
If it were up to series star Jared Padalecki and showrunner Anna Fricke, Walker would be continuing its run on The CW. But, if it had to end, they’re glad to send it off with the Season 4 finale on Wednesday night.
Walker was officially canceled in May, and Fricke said they were unaware of the fate of the show when writing the finale. As “there’s always a risk in network television,” she explained that she tried to bring enough stories to a satisfying conclusion while leaving threads to explore in a potential Season 5.
This season, Walker struggled with an empty nest as Stella (Violet Brinson) and August (Kale Culley) began to branch out on their own. After four seasons of trying to find a work-life balance, he finally takes a step back from his Ranger duties to spend some extended time with his family and informs newly minted Lt. Cassie Perez that he’ll be taking a leave of absence.
“It really was about getting the family to a good place. They are on to their next chapter,” Fricke said. “That moment when the family drives off together, the kids and Walker and Geri, feels like some sort of closure in a way. In a perfect world, [it would have] gone on and there would be more stories and more complications, but they do seem like they’re in a good place.”
Padalecki gives kudos to the writers for where they leave Walker, because “that’s how I feel right now,” he says.
“I’ve had this job for 20 years. There’s never been a week of new television where I haven’t been No. 1 on the call sheet of an hour long show. I’m still grieving, and I probably will for a while. But I feel really excited to spend more time with my wife, our children…the rest of my family, my friends. So I’m happy for Walker, I think,” he said. “I’m bummed that he’s not on the next job, because I know he loves being a dog with a bone and getting his work done, but I’m so happy he gets to take this break and reset and spend time with his loved ones.”
As the cancellation decision loomed, Fricke revealed the network gave her the opportunity to make changes to the final episode to give audiences more closure, but she opted not to.
“It didn’t sit well with me to try to wrap up the whole series with one revised scene,” she explained. “It seemed too rushed and too hurried, and it would have felt tacked on. So we opted to leave the finale as it was.”
However, she did take the network up on their offer to air an extended version of the episode, which allowed for a few more scenes that she thinks viewers will appreciate, including a rare scene with the entire Walker family.
“It was the last family scene that everyone was in together,” she remembered. “It took forever to get it because everyone was emotional…it wasn’t a pivotal scene, or anything like that. It was just a fun energy with all of them there, which was always my favorite thing. So I’m really glad that that made it back in.”
Coincidentally, Padalecki also remembered that scene fondly, telling Deadline “it just felt like a nice goodbye both on camera and off….I’m excited for that, because you feel the love that we all have for each other.”
At least, Fricke jokes, nobody was kidnapped or on the brink of death when the credits rolled. Instead, the things left up to the viewers’ imagination are largely positive, like Walker’s eventual proposal to Geri (Odette Annable).
In the episode, there’s one quick shot of Walker admiring the engagement ring inside its box before tucking it into his pocket and meeting his family outside. She says that to include the actual proposal would have felt “too soon.”
“Walker said this to Emily in a flashback. She said, ‘What will you do if I’m gone?’ And he said, ‘Marry Geri and work at Sidestep.’ And that was always kind of a joke for what the end of the series would be,” she said. “But in my mind, I didn’t want to get all the way to a proposal…I don’t think they’re there yet.”
If there’s one thing Fricke is most disappointed she won’t get to explore, it’s James Van Der Beek’s arc as Walker’s new neighbor — a full circle moment for the showrunner, whose first TV job was on Dawson’s Creek.
In the final moments of the episode, Van Der Beek pulls up to the house as Walker and his family are headed on their vacation and, even though the moment is fleeting, it hints at a deliciously dramatic storyline for Season 5.
“It was gonna be a cool. We had big plans for Season 5,” Fricke said. “Well, maybe there’ll be a movie.”
Well, whatever iteration of Walker may or may not come next, Fricke adds that she has plenty of ideas to explore.
“Even from the first whisper of maybe this is the end, the producers were all talking about, ‘How do we keep this going? What do we spin off? What do we do?'” she said. “I think these are great characters and a great world and I absolutely love working with the crew in Austin. So we definitely think about it a lot.”
When asked if she could divulge any of her ideas, she teased: “We always wanted to do the Hawk’s Shadow story. I would really follow any of these characters. I really always wanted to see more out of any of them. I would follow any of them anywhere, to be honest.”