Sullivan's Crossing's Morgan Kohan and Scott Patterson Break Down the Bombshell Season 1 Finale

[Note: This post contains major spoilers for the Sullivan's Crossing Season 1 finale, "Sins of the Father."]

Just when it seems like the pieces are finally falling into place for the residents of Sullivan's Crossing, the Canadian drama goes and blows it all up. The revelations and cliffhangers come fast and furious in the Season 1 finale, "Sins of the Father," which brings Maggie's (Morgan Kohan) legal battle to a close, while also planting seeds for the currently-in-production second season. No one emerges from the Sullivan's Crossing finale unscathed — least of all Maggie's father Sully (Scott Patterson), who, in the episode's final minutes, suffers a medical emergency after his daughter leaves the campground and returns to Boston, seemingly for good.

But before she breaks viewers' hearts, creator Roma Roth, who wrote the finale, puts a bow on the incident that brought successful neurosurgeon Maggie to Sullivan's Crossing in the first place: the death of her patient Kevin Markiff and the subsequent negligence suit. After sitting through hours of contentious courtroom testimony, Maggie risks her medical license by admitting liability and apologizing to Mrs. Markiff (Shelley Thompson) for her role in Kevin's death.

The selfless decision (which is ultimately voided when Mrs. Markiff drops the charges in response to her apology) demonstrates just how much Maggie's time in rural Nova Scotia has changed her — and how different the loving community of Sullivan's Crossing is from the cutthroat world of Boston.

Though it's possible Maggie would have had a similar change of heart if she'd remained in the city, Kohan believes "it would've been a much longer road" to get to that point. "It's also just the people she's surrounded by at the Crossing — their whole motive is to be there for each other, to support, to have understanding for each other's struggles," she tells Primetimer. "I don't think that she has that perspective with, necessarily, the people that she's surrounded by in Boston."

Other storylines, like Cal's (Chad Michael Murray) decision to finally scatter his late wife's ashes, opening the door for him to wholeheartedly pursue Maggie, appear to reach a resolution, only to stop short of the finish line. Despite their big kiss by the waterfall in Episode 8, "Aftershock," Cal and Maggie are often like ships passing in the night, and in the finale, they're each denied an opportunity to reveal their true feelings: Cal's letter to Maggie (the contents of which remain a mystery, but perhaps not for long) is swooped up by a jealous Lola (Amalia Williamson), and Maggie fails to catch Cal before he leaves the campground for the season.

While viewers may be frustrated that Sullivan's Crossing continues to keep Maggie and Cal apart, Kohan is enjoying her slow-burn romance with Murray. "Chad is just the most wonderful human, so it's been so great," she explains. "In TV, you don't know where you're going all the time with those episodes as the scripts come in. So it's fun for both of us to be like, 'Oh, are they going to yet? Nope, not yet!' 'It seems like they're there? No? Okay, we're going to drag this out a little longer.' It's been really fun."

Of course, when (not if; this is a feel-good romance, after all) Maggie and Cal do get together, they'll be facing a new obstacle: Maggie's surprise pregnancy. Kohan explains that she knew about the bombshell development before filming began, but she'd forgotten about it until she received the script for the finale. "I felt like a viewer also being like, 'Oh, I forgot about that!'" she says with a laugh. Still, she insists the reveal "is not completely out of left field," as there are a few subtle moments pointing to Maggie being pregnant, including her "not feeling so good before the court case, [but] blaming it on the stress and the pressure." Adds Kohan, "If you're really looking for it, there is a little bit in there, for sure."

She adds that Maggie's pregnancy is "quite the cliffhanger" in that "it will absolutely complicate a lot of things" for her character moving forward. "It's definitely a big part of Season 2 — what her life looks like, who's surrounding her, where she is, all of that. All of those questions come up in Season 2."

Maggie's journey culminates in an emotional confrontation with Sully. For all their growth over the course of the season, Maggie is still upset that Sully "didn't ever come after" her when her mother (Lynda Boyd) took her away from the Crossing 15 years prior. "Something like that, when you've been hurt for so long, is forever. There's always going to be remnants of that," Kohan says, noting that of the many dramatic moments in Season 1, this scene stands out in her mind as one of the hardest to film. "Knowing that would resonate with people and wanting to do it right — I think I put a lot of pressure on myself."

Patterson felt a similar responsibility to honor Sully's story and the rich "emotional life" crafted by Roth and author Robyn Carr (who also wrote the Virgin River books). Luckily enough, the actor has some experience playing characters who are outwardly prickly but tenderhearted on the inside: For seven years, he played diner owner Luke Danes on Gilmore Girls, a role that prepared him for this latest challenge in unexpected ways.

"What the Gilmore experience showed me is that you can be a little darker, a little edgier, and it actually helps the show, especially if the show has so many more vibrant and livelier and bubblier and more positive characters in it," he tells Primetimer. "I kind of felt the same way about this, even though this was a lot more of a personal journey into what I consider to be a far better-developed character in Sully. Because we really get to know his background, we get to know his personal demons, we get to know what he's really facing a lot of the time ... It's asking me to go deeper far more often, emotionally, than Luke ever did."

He finds particular joy in going "back to the basics" with his co-stars, particularly in scenes like Maggie and Sully's final conversation. "With any actor worth their salt, it's all really about trust," he explains. "You hope that somebody is listening to you, and you're listening to them. Because no take can be the same if you're truly listening to your partner. So I think that's what we both do, and everybody in the cast, for that matter."

Patterson likens the process of working on Sullivan's Crossing's big moments to the Seinfeld scene in which George Costanza (Jason Alexander) tries to teach Jerry Seinfeld how to lie. "He says, 'Jerry, it's not a lie if you believe it.' And that is a great acting lesson," says Patterson. "You have to believe you are this person in this situation. If you can do that, then you can really lie your butt off and get away with it because you believe it — it's not a lie to you. I am not this Sully Sullivan character, but I understand him. I've been in all of these situations in one way or another, so I can draw upon that."

In the closing minutes of the finale, viewers finally learn what really happened the day Maggie left the Crossing with her mother: A flashback reveals Sully did chase after them, but in his rush to catch up, he accidentally hit Lola with his car, severely injuring her. The secret weighs heavily on Sully, who developed a close relationship with Lola in the years that followed, but he can't bring himself to tell Maggie the truth, as doing so would spell "the end of his world," explains Patterson. "It's the end of his life; it's the end of his reputation; it's the end of everything," he says. "It's the nuclear bomb that detonates in the middle of his life."

Wracked with guilt as he remembers that tragic day, Sully's ears begin to ring, and he slumps over before falling onto the floor. The Season 1 finale ends with Sully in a somewhat unconscious state, and though Patterson is careful not to offer an official diagnosis, he describes the medical emergency as "a compilation of stresses and anxieties over the past few decades."

"The loss of his relationship with his child, the ending of his marriage, his reputation in tatters with his daughter and his ex-wife," he says when asked about what's going through Sully's mind in this moment. "He can't pay the bills. Now [Maggie] returns, and there's all this added stress because he ain't cutting it with her — she wants to leave again. She comes back, she wants to leave again. His alcoholism. All of this stuff. This guy is a guy who is obviously going to come to some kind of a moment, and we're witnessing this in his real time."

"People go through these moments, they have these types of conversations, they have all of these deep feelings," Patterson continues. "It's terrifying to access that in your life, and this is how tender it can be, and how fraught with fear it can be, to say these words to somebody that you love. So it's a really detailed, nuanced, and truthful examination of human behavior, family behavior, under high stress."

Given everything that happens in the Season 1 finale, Sullivan's Crossing has a lot to address in Season 2, but Kohan and Patterson, who are currently filming the final few episodes of the season, promise all will be revealed when the drama returns next year. "I think people are going to be very happy with the season," teases Kohan. "It's still got that slow burn, but the season does move fast, and in a really good way. And also our timeline is condensed. It's different in that way, too, which is really fun."

"We really get more into all of these characters that we've built and a little bit more of their histories and their backstories, and why they are the way that they are. So, we get to learn a lot more and have more appreciation for them and how they relate to each other," she adds. And yes, that includes Cal and Maggie, who "get a lot more screen time together" next season: "They get to get to know each other and develop their relationship, whatever that looks like, more throughout Season 2."

"You're going to see some old narratives get tied up, big themes continue to be addressed, new narratives hatch and progress in an explosive way. New information, new twists and turns, new surprises, new arcs, deeper character development, deeper drama — the stakes are going way up," promises Patterson. "Fasten your seatbelts, kids. It's going to be quite a ride in Season 2."

Sullivan's Crossing Season 1 is available to stream on The CW website. Join the discussion about the show in our forums.

Claire Spellberg Lustig is the Senior Editor at Primetimer and a scholar of The View. Follow her on Twitter at @c_spellberg.