[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Equalizer series finale “Decisions.”]
Mel (Liza Lapira) may have started The Equalizer Season 5 out of the equalizing life while the show explored her PTS, but it’s her husband Harry (Adam Goldberg) who’s maybe ready to leave that crime-fighting behind in the finale.
As he sees it, they’ve been lucky, but eventually, their luck will run out. He doesn’t want to grow old without her. So what would they do instead? Harry envisions sleeping, brunch, and long walks with their dog Horatio. But in the end, they do decide to keep equalizing, for now. This is the work they’re meant to do, and some risks are worth taking.
“Isn’t it a funny reversal? She started saying, ‘I’m out, I quit,’ and then at the end, he wants out and he quits, and I think they’re going to meet each other halfway at some point,” Liza Lapira shared when she recently stopped by TV Insider’s office. (Watch the full video interview, which was conducted before the series was canceled, above.) “The finale, they decide to keep going. I think she’s ready to keep going. Once she said, ‘I’m back in,’ I think she meant she’s back in.”
While Harry’s intention was for the both of them to get out together, Lapira is interested in seeing explored, in a sixth season (the show has yet to be renewed), a reversal where he wants out and she doesn’t. “Then eventually, [they] get to a point where they both decide together. For him, it’s really her safety or their safety that freaks him out, which after five years, you think he’d be used to it,” she pointed out. “It’d be nice to see if he stopped and what that would do to their couplehood.”
Lapira enjoyed exploring Mel’s PTS (including the therapy scenes) as the show portrayed it, that it’s not a linear path and there are steps forward and back. “I wanted to portray a strong person boldly asking for help, being reticent about it, which is so true. Having shame about not being perfect, which is so true. So the PTS storyline was a really meaningful and probably one of my favorite storylines that Mel has had,” she shared.
As a result, at the end of the season, Mel’s “doing great. I think we’ve established through Season 5 and a little through Season 4 that recovery is not linear, mental health is not linear, that life is life,” said Lapira.
The finale also ended with Robyn (Queen Latifah) and Dante (Tory Kittles) engaged, and everyone gathered at the McCall house for an engagement party, which Liza Lapira said was “chaos” to film.
“The assistant director, the director, they were just having migraines because all we want to do when we get together is talk and hang out and laugh and not focus. It was like a kindergarten, first day of school to them. To us, it was like a cocktail party,” she explained. “It was great. And it’s always like that because we did a Thanksgiving scene and that was also chaos. Because we’re so segmented, our storylines, that when I finally see the people I barely see, it’s like, ‘Hey!’”
Watch the full video interview above for much more from Liza Lapira about The Equalizer Season 5 and its finale, Mel’s key relationships and family, and spinoff ideas.
The Equalizer, Streaming now, Paramount+
