Carlton Cuse on ‘Bates Motel’ season 3 finale, Nicole Peltz, hints at series finale
The third season of Bates Motel wrapped with one of the A&E drama’s biggest shockers to date and creator Carlton Cuse discussed Norman’s (Freddie Highmore) succumbing to the Norma in his head to execute a most gruesome murder and close out season 3 as well as Nicola Peltz as Bradley.
“[Co-showrunner] Kerry Ehrin and I always planned to bring her back. Our schedule of using her was interrupted because she went off to star in the Transformers movie with Mark Wahlberg, and we really did want to give her that opportunity,” Cuse tells THR.
Nicola Peltz and Freddie Highmore on “Bates Motel”
“At the same time, we didn’t feel like our story with her was finished. The more we talked about the evolution of the story, the more it felt like the end of the season was this big turning point for Norman, and Norman losing the ability to discern when he was in one personality or the other.”
The pair raced away from White Pine Bay, Norman fought to keep the fictional version of Mother (Vera Farmiga) living inside his head, but truly shocked audiences when he failed.
“We also wanted there to be a seismic event. Bradley was the perfect person to catalyze that step-up in behavior because she was the first woman besides his mother that Norman had deep feelings for. Bradley sort of felt the same way. So when she puts Norman in this incredibly difficult emotional situation where she wants him to run away with her, that sort of fries his circuitry.”
Fans need to remember it was Mother, not Norman who carried out the gruesome and bloody murder…sort of: “We felt it was really important, that decision to not graphically show Norman creating the murder. In his mind, it’s his mother doing the crime, so it felt really appropriate to figure out how to best illustrate that in the storytelling. We didn’t want to show Norman committing a crime. We felt like by doing that in some ways we were preserving the audience’s empathy for the character. There still is a really good Norman inside the same body as the bad Norman. We wanted to be sure that was dramatically illustrated.”
Check out the full interview here.
There’s more on Emma’s health, played by Olivia Cooke, thoughts on the series finale and how that will evolve.
