‘Surface’ Season 2 End, Season 3 Plans: Warrants, Sophie-James Future

[This story contains spoilers from Surface season two, including the finale “Unearthed.”]

By the end of season two of Apple TV+‘s Surface, Gugu Mbatha-Raw‘s Sophie Ellis finally has evidence connecting the Huntley family to her mother’s death, but, in typical Surface fashion, there’s one more twist as she’s ready to present this information to the police.

It turns out there are warrants out for Sophie’s arrest from the time when she was going by the alias of Tess Caldwell. Any discovery of what these warrants are for and how this new information about Sophie’s past could affect her future will have to wait for a potential third season of Surface. Apple TV+ has not yet renewed the thriller, which premiered its eight-episode second season on Feb. 21 before releasing the season finale on April 11.

But star and executive producer Mbatha-Raw has already talked with showrunner Veronica West “a little bit” about where the story could go, though she “can’t reveal” the “thoughts” shared in these conversations.

“I feel like [Sophie] has gained a lot of skills in this experience that she’s had in terms of her investigative prowess and her quest for justice,” Mbatha-Raw says about the future for her character. “So, I’m curious to just see her continue to speak truth to power, expose this corruption. And there’s also scope for other countries, other places that she’s explored.”

And after telling The Hollywood Reporter that Surface‘s first season finale “doubles down on the premise of the show,” West now says the end of season two offers “an opportunity to triple down.”

“I think that the cliffhanger and the ending gives us an opportunity to triple down and level up again as we realize what Sophie is really capable of,” she tells THR. “It was so much fun to sit down with Gugu and just brainstorm about what are these warrants for? What could Sophie have done, basically, in that missing chunk of time between when she left Eliza (Millie Brady), which we’ve seen in flashback, and when she met James (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), which we’ve also seen in flashback in season one, when she was the waitress at the restaurant in San Francisco? You know, there’s a good six to eight years there, where she could have gotten in quite a bit of trouble. And to me, that’s really exciting to think about.”

Lauren Neustadter, who executive produces Surface through her and Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine company, speaking to THR before Surface season two came out, says she and the team behind the series are “optimistically waiting, but we would love to continue to tell the story. And I do think there’s some really great stuff yet to come.”

And she praises West’s “really clear vision of what these chapters of Sophie’s life could and would be.”

But she also hopes season two will be well-received regardless of what happens next.

“I always say, if we’re doing our jobs right, we leave our audience feeling really satisfied with the season that we’ve given them, but we also open the door to something incredibly interesting that’s yet to come,” Neustadter says.

The finale also sees Sophie and James (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) parting ways after they’ve slowly reconnected following their antagonistic reunion earlier in the season. As James understands more of what Sophie’s looking for in her past, the two team up and go on the run together.

But when they get to the airport, passports in tow, Sophie says she has to stay and finish her pursuit of justice for her mom.

Still, it remains to be seen if Surface’s central couple is over or if they’ll find their way back to each other.

Mbatha-Raw and Jackson-Cohen were both coy when asked about Sophie and James’ future.

“We shall see. I mean, I think for Sophie she will always love James on some level, but I also think that she has to finish what she started and [has a] duty to herself and her own identity. I don’t think she could be a good partner if she hasn’t solved this piece of herself,” Mbatha-Raw says. “And I think there is a bit of wisdom and maturity that goes on for Sophie — that self-knowledge that she arrives at that she can’t be with James, really, even if she loves him, until she heals this side of her.”

Jackson-Cohen adds, “I would love to see where that goes for Sophie and James and whether there is actual repair, or they have to go their separate ways.”

As for how James’ feelings change as he learns more about what Sophie’s really doing in London, he indicates it’s a progression.

“James’ intentions, kind of coming into season two, they’re quite single-minded and child-like. He comes in with this sort of rage of like, ‘I’m going to make you pay,’ which is quite a kind of childish thing. I don’t think he quite understands the minutia of how complicated or how isolating it must feel for Sophie to be on this quest,” Jackson-Cohen says. “And I think there’s an understanding from him that — not that it’s a selfless act, but I think that there is an understanding of you have to do this, and I can’t stand in your way. And if that means that, this love will always be there but physically, we cannot be together, I do believe there’s the sort of the beginnings of an understanding of that from James. If you love you have to kind of let the person be who they need to be, and not try and control the narrative and try and put someone back in a box, which is ultimately what he was doing the whole of season one.”

But West remains optimistic about their romance.

“I feel like they are soulmates in this weird, twisted way,” West says. “They’re always drawn to each other. And Sophie leaves James with an even bigger debt at the end of season two than she did at the end of season one. It was just money in season one. In season two, he’s really on the run. He killed somebody for her, and I think she owes him a way out of that, and she’s going to do whatever she can, take whatever she can, to get him out of this situation. They love each other. They’re toxic soulmates.”

By the end of the season, both Sophie and viewers learn how Sophie’s mom died, but viewers hear different reasons from the Huntleys for why she was killed and Sophie was kept away from this posh family.

Still West says viewers can trust what Sophie remembers.

“I think when you see it through Gugu’s eyes, when we see Sophie’s memory of Olivia (Joely Richardson) dropping that gun in shock, I mean, that is really what happened. I think we can trust Sophie’s memories and Olivia finally confesses to Eliza (Millie Brady) that that’s what happened,” West says. “What’s interesting is seeing these people kind of close ranks. That’s really what the whole season is about. And the people who know the secret are guarding the secret. And if you don’t have to know the secret, we’re not telling you the secret.”

Sophie’s mother’s fate and how all the Huntleys, Sophie included, reckon with this discovery of a new family connection, becomes clear after various twists and turns, with such unexpected developments being a part of Surface’s DNA since season one.

But for West and Neustadter, all these surprises are meticulously planned out and character driven.

“The first thing we did as a team of writers is figure out what really happened,” West says about mapping out season two’s twists. “You have to start at the end when you’re writing a mystery like this. And we really learned in season two that we wanted to completely plot out the day that Sophie’s mother died and the day that Sophie and Eliza parted ways, what happened during this time. So, for us, as writers, I feel like it doesn’t feel as twisty, because we’re really just slowly turning over the cards to reveal and put the puzzle pieces together of what happened that fateful day. And there was a really fun thing that we did in season two, which was all of the memories that Sophie has, they seem like they could be disparate. She remembers driving in a car with her mother. She remembers her mother cutting flowers. She remembers different things. But as they shuffle together and the season continues, you realize it’s all part of one continuous day, and you get to see everything in order at the end of [episode eight], and you realize, ‘Oh, this is why that memory was burned into her head.’ This is why that flower petal dropping was the most important one that ever dropped, because that’s the last time her mother ever cut flowers.”

Neustadter adds, “When you talk about the twists and what is the intention behind them, I think they’re all very character driven. What happens with Henry (Rupert Graves) in the finale, sort of seeing how he feels and what he does, I don’t think you see that coming. And I think it’s incredibly interesting. I think it’s revelatory. I think it’s a twist that’s all about the character’s emotion.”

Later, when Eliza is the one to provide Sophie with a key clue about the whereabouts of her mother’s body, Brady says her character is trying to forge a new path for the Huntley family.

“I think it’s a moment where she’s choosing what road she can go towards: A new road, which is towards truth, or she can stay in the generational trauma that her family have sat in for years upon years upon years,” Brady tells THR. “And so I see it as less of betrayal, I see it as like choosing herself and choosing to not stay in in that cycle.”

A potential season three, West says, would also explore where the next generation of Huntleys in Eliza and Quinn (Phil Dunster) go. As for Sophie’s future as a Huntley, Mbatha-Raw isn’t sure if Sophie would feel comfortable identifying with this dangerous group.

“It’s so complex, really. I think that she feels her greatest tie is to the memory and justice for her mother. So as much as she now knows that she’s a Huntley, and she now knows that she has a brother and a sister and who her father is, I think that for her to fully identify as a Huntley when she knows what they did to her mother. I think it still puts her in a very ambiguous position, because you know that you can’t ever get past such a big crime, such a dark cover up,” Mbatha-Raw says. “I think that she feels compelled to expose them. And, so, whether you can expose something and still be a part of it is, you know, a little bit of a tension point. And I don’t know if she would even want to be — I need to talk to Veronica about this, but where I get to is there’s too little trust. There’s been too much betrayal, and it’s her mom, so there’s almost no bigger bond that has been severed because of this family. So, yeah, I’m not sure that she would be comfortably able to identify or claim life as a Huntley, unless there was another ulterior motive to bring further justice.”

Season two of Surface is now streaming on Apple TV+.