Furious cast and creator explain why Alice kills Jay, and what that ending *really* means

Emmy Rossum and creator Liz Meriwether explain why Alice kills Jay in the season one finale of Furious and what that ending really means.

Basically, Alice goes to Jay’s bedroom after Catherine has been arrested. At first, it looks like Jay simply dies after struggling to breathe. But the show later reveals that Alice actually killed him. She deliberately stepped on the tube supplying Jay with oxygen and covered his mouth and nose while calling for help.

So, why did Alice do it?

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Rossum said that Alice was not walking into the room planning to murder Jay. She said, “I don’t think she’s thinking that she’s gonna do anything. I think she thinks, ‘I’m gonna arrest him. I’m gonna wake him up. It’s time to come downstairs and see what we can find in this house and hold you accountable for it.’ And then he sees her and he recognises her.”

She added, “He hasn’t recognised her the first time they met. And he says that awful thing to her, and I think there’s just a switch that flips, and that oxygen wire is right there, and she puts her foot on it. And then she starts to feel that power, and she kills him, and then he’s dead, and you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.”

Alice already knew the video existed, but she did not know how widely it had been seen. She had been desperate to get into the FBI’s secure evidence room to find out what happened to it. Later, Alice finally watches the video herself. She then searches the database and discovers that it has been downloaded more than 50,000 times.

‘We all have a monster side’

Rossum explained what that moment means for Alice. She said, “I think it’s maybe a larger number than she could have imagined, but I think it’s also a concrete number.”

She added, “I think when she sees the tape, she knows that it was real, knows that it wasn’t just something that happened to her that was imaginary, and knows that people have seen it and that it’s out there.”

Alice has spent the whole season hunting Catherine for killing men. Now she has killed someone herself. Rossum actually described this as Alice discovering her darker side.

“We all have a shadow side. We all have a monster side. And we all wonder if we could do that, like, what it would take,” she said. “I think Alice has been holding so much in and burying so much. She eats all of her anger and Catherine kind of vomits and explodes it everywhere and destroys everything in her wake, except Alden.”

Rossum also said that Alice has become powerful and capable, but she is still scared of what happened to her as a child. Her connection with Catherine changes during their confrontation because Catherine understands that part of her.

She said, “She starts to feel an allegiance there in a way that she doesn’t feel in the normal office spaces that she usually works in.”

So, why was Catherine the one who killed Isabel?

Meanwhile, Catherine finally remembers what happened to Isabel. It turns out Catherine herself killed her best friend. Isabel had been badly bleeding after giving birth and had been abused by Jay. She was in terrible pain and asked Catherine to help her. Catherine then injected her with heroin, killing her as an act of mercy.

The show suggests Catherine had buried the memory because of the trauma. Creator Liz Meriwether said the writers actually came up with this idea while working on the early episodes.

Speaking to Decider, Meriwether explained how the idea developed. She said,  “It came out in the writer’s room, this idea of memory, her piecing together the memories that she had of what happened to her.”

She continued, “So in a way, it’s not a whodunit. It’s the story of a serial killer trying to figure out why she’s killing so many people. It’s a serial killer trying to figure out why she’s a serial killer, which I think is really interesting.”

Meriwether then added, “I knew that I needed a mystery. I knew I needed some kind of thing that’s pulling you through. We know who the killer is from the first moments of the show. I think I felt like there needed to still be something with a lot of secrets that needed to come out.”

So, by the end of season one, both women have crossed a line. Catherine killed Isabel because she was asked to end her suffering. Alice killed Jay after he recognised her and reminded her of the abuse she suffered as a teenager.

And now both women know what the other is capable of.

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