Daniel Levy looked back at his popular series, Schitt’s Creek during a recent interview with Variety.
Over a year after the final episode of season six was aired, Levy said that when it came to closing the door on the show he created with his dad, actor Eugene Levy, he didn’t take the end of the show lightly. In fact, he spent a lot of time ensuring the finale season would be just right.
"I wanted a certain level of open-endedness. I never wanted the audience to feel like we’ve abandoned them," he said.
Dan Levy Wanted To Do What Was Right For Each Character
"It was always important to make sure that everything happened for the right reason. It might not be what the audience wants, but it’s what the character needs," Levy explained.
According to Levy, he did a lot of brainstorming as he attempted to create the ideal storylines for each character of Schitt’s Creek.
"It was a ton of brainstorming. It was a ton of post-its on walls. We spent a whole afternoon just thinking about inside jokes, or storylines that we wanted to call back — references, characters," he noted.
Dan Levy Didn’t Want To Much Shoved Into The Last Couple Of Episodes
Levy asked himself, and his team, "How sentimental do we want to go? What are the things that need to be said? What are the major revelations from characters that we haven’t heard yet?"
"It was a big, long list, and we just slowly started to cross them off as we went," he shared.
One major sticking point for Levy was that he wanted to take his time winding down the stories of each cast member, rather than put too much in the last couple of episodes.
Dan Levy Wanted The End To Come ‘Slowly’
Levy went on, "For me, I never wanted to feel the panic of getting 12 episodes into our season and then feeling like we have to wrap it up in two. I don’t want the last episode to feel like this mad panic to suddenly tie a thousand shoelaces. If we do our jobs properly, we can do this slowly but surely, so that by the end it just feels like a really great episode of TV."
When Variety then asked Levy if he wanted to establish a clear ending for each cast member’s storyline, Levy said caring for each person was important.
Dan Levy Wasn’t Striving For Perfection
"That would sort of go against the philosophy of the show if we just took a turn and suddenly people’s lives imploded! The number of jokes we had in the writers room, like, ‘the motel burns down, and that’s the end of the show!’" he laughed.
Levy also added that he and his team "thought about everyone" and "thought about everything."
"We thought about every relationship that we had set up. But at the same time, there’s only so much you can do," he added.
