‘R.J. Decker’ Boss Reveals What Could Happen in Season 3 After That Shocking Cliffhanger (Exclusive)

R.J. Decker ends its second season in such a way that viewers are going to need a third. R.J. (Scott Speedman) and Mel (Bevin Bru) are at odds for quite a bit of the finale, but in the final scene, they’re the ones who can, by working together, hopefully save their loved ones. TV Insider spoke with creator Rob Doherty about the finale and what a Season 3 — should the series be renewed — could look like. Warning: Spoilers for the R.J. Decker Season 2 finale ahead!

R.J. and Emi (Jaina Lee Ortiz) are convinced that the man who confessed to the murder of Mel’s friend and fellow officer Bobby is innocent like he now says he is. That puts them at odds with Mel, though it turns out they’re right and the real killer was the officer’s wife, Jessica — who has her eye on Mel’s family in the finale’s last moments.

Meanwhile, this case puts R.J. and his new love interest Trudy (Shantel VanSanten) at odds as he pushes her to help him with his investigation and she refuses (at first), given her close connections with cops who think the case is closed and are not too happy with what R.J. is doing. It’s bigger than them, he argues, but she wonders: Is it bigger than him and Emi? She does run the prints he asks her to, but she also tells him she’ll call only if anything comes of it and not if it doesn’t, suggesting their romance could be over…

Below, showrunner Rob Doherty breaks down that finale cliffhanger and teases what could be next if the series is renewed for Season 3. (Plus, read what Bru had to say about the finale here.)

You leave the finale off on a major cliffhanger. So how are you feeling about a Season 3 considering you did do that?

Rob Doherty: We have to swing for the fences. I mean, it is true that we are through two whole seasons, but it’s also true that those two seasons add up to exactly 16 episodes. We want more. We want to plan for success. We want to give a reason for everyone to come back to the show if and when the time comes. So we feel confident in that we have great partners at ABC and at 20th. We feel like they’ve done a great job of promoting the show. So yeah, we want to tee up more. We want to be ready for more. We want to be ready for a third season.

Disney/Dana Hawley

Talk about ending the season on that cliffhanger. How early on did you know that was the specific one you wanted to do this season?

[Laughs.] Maybe three weeks before the script was due. The show that I created and ran before this was Elementary. It ran for seven seasons and we averaged about 24 episodes per season. It’s been a learning curve to do nine episodes and then seven episodes. It’s funny, you’d think it’s much easier. It certainly takes less time, but it can be much harder to sculpt things, to arc things. It’s a little harder to take your time and let stories breathe. I’m really happy with the way the season turned out, but it was hard to try things out and build to a finale. We couldn’t really start something in a 13th episode that would lead us to a 20th.

We had other boxes to check this year. We wanted to meet R.J.’s dad [Beau Bridges]. We wanted to introduce Trudy. It takes up oxygen in a good way, but it kind of left us just sort of eyeing Episode 7 and wondering what would fit the best at that time. So yeah, confession is didn’t really have it until we were kind of late in our season.

So did you know you wanted to explore something with Mel and then that kind of led to this?

I should say I was really intrigued by the idea of putting R.J. and Mel on opposite sides of something. It’s such a powerful relationship, not just procedurally for us, but emotionally, they’re fun to watch together. When you look back to how they met and the circumstances by which they know each other, it’s strange. Traditionally, those are not two people who would like each other, an ex and a current. I think there’s a line in the show, Catherine [Adelaide Clemens] observes that despite the odds, they’ve been pretty good work spouses. And that’s true, and that’s why you want to upset it a bit. You want to put them at odds and see what happens. The story was very appealing, but also just the premise of Scott and Bevin working in scenes like that, going toe to toe, that was really exciting, too. I guess, full disclosure, it was kind of searching for a way to position the players that way, and the writer, Juan Carlos Fernandez, came up with a great story, so it became a no-brainer.

The thing with Jessica is if she kill her own husbands… She’s a wild card. You don’t know what she could do to Mel’s family. So how worried should we be?

I guess be worried. Jessica strikes me as someone more than just a Black Widow. I think clearly, her brain works in a different way, very calculating, very cold. I think what’s interesting is to that point, she has killed for profit. I think for her, it’s just kind of, “I need money, I know what I’ll do. I will kill my husband and enjoy the insurance benefits.” But what does it mean to end up in that person’s crosshairs? That’s where Mel is very squarely. So yeah, I’d say be afraid.

What can you say about how Mel will react? There’s a question of, will she have a line now? Because this is her family…

It’s true. Mel as a character can be a bit of an escalator. I love her when she’s kind of icy cool — Bevin’s so good at it — but there’s a lot of fire under that, too. I know Mel has slashed some tires to make a point. She’s not afraid to poke the bear. There’s a risk coming at Mel this way. Jessica is a scary antagonist, but Mel can bring the heat, too.

Also right now, it seems like R.J. is the one who’s going to be by her side helping her. And then it’s also how far might R.J. allow her to go and what that means for their dynamic. Because their relationship was just strained, but now, they’re back on the same page just in time to work together.

Yeah, definitely. We see it as a family problem, not a Mel problem. It’s Mel’s daughter and wife, but really this is R.J.’s family. It’s one of the things I’ve liked the most about the show is just this premise of found family, and so it’s very much a shared problem. It’s something that will affect each of them in a meaningful way moving forward.

What can you say about what we could see in a Season 3 when it comes to this? Are you looking at this as a multi-episode arc or something that would be resolved in the premiere?

I think everything is on the table, to be honest. It’s my job and the job of the staff now to rattle test both of those options. Does it make the most sense to address everything in a single episode and move on with your season? Absolutely, there’s a case to be made for that. But I have to say, Jessica as a character, the actress who portrayed her, they’re great. She’s terrific, and there’s a case to be made for keeping her around and seeing her a bit more and letting her linger as a threat. So we’ll see.

Yeah, especially because Mel was helping her all these years.

Yeah, I think as R.J. says in the end, Jessica’s a hell of an actor and a lot of scary people in the real world, that’s just what they are. They’re so good at showing one face when in fact they’re something else entirely. So I think as talented a detective as Mel is, as smart as she is, as empathetic as she is, Jessica’s been a little bit better. She just never lets that mask slip.

I like Trudy, and I like her and R.J. together. I know the obvious thing is R.J. and Emi, but you introduced this character who seems like she could be good for R.J.. They seem good together. So talk about bringing her into the show and exploring that relationship for him.

We very deliberately in the first season positioned R.J. and Emi to move forward, to keep progressing as a couple. That’s certainly where it felt we were going in the end. And the antidote to moving too far ahead was killing her father, letting that upset the apple cart, letting us hit pause and reset and putting them in different places for the top of this season. It’s been good. It was great seeing them together to the degree that they were together in the first season. It’s been fun to watch them operate more independently in a second season, and yet we have to find a little romance where we can.

We were excited to have an opportunity to work with Shantel, who I had not worked with before but knew her from other shows and film work. That made the whole thing a little more tantalizing, the idea of Scott and Shantel coupling over the course of Season 2. It was fun to watch that relationship, but it was also kind of fun to watch Emi absorb it, let it wash over her. It forces her to sit up a little straighter and go, “Well, how do I feel about this and what does it mean? And how do I actually feel about R.J. and how have I been telling myself I feel about R.J.?” So it’s one of these things, I think, again, if we’re lucky enough to have a third season, we’d like to explore a little bit more. There were times I felt like I rushed it a little bit because we kind of had to, but we shall see.

I like where we left R.J. and Trudy at the end of the season. I like that someone’s kind of pointing out the possibility that he may still have some feelings for Emi. So we owe that. She’s put it out there, but we haven’t settled on, is she right? Is her read right? Is it something else? So that’s definitely something we’ll want to come back to in a third season.

So Trudy would be back and we would see more with R.J. and Trudy in a third season? Their relationship was left up in the air because of the way she reacted to what he wanted for the case.

Yeah, we have to see. I think some of this will depend on when we’re picked up and how we’re picked up, and frankly, what other opportunities come Shantel’s way. She’s, as I said, terrific at what she does. Other folks will want to work with her. I would love to think she’ll be available to us and interested in coming back, but we just have to wait and see. Will she have an opening that fits into our schedule and vice versa? That’s more of a logistical issue than anything else, but we certainly loved having her around, and the hope would be to see her again.

Disney/Dana Hawley

Where’s R.J.’s heart when it comes to both Trudy and Emi at the end of the season? Does he even know?

I think R.J. meant what he said when he told Trudy that the problem in front of them in the finale was bigger than relationships. I think he really was very work-focused, and maybe to a fault. He is attacking this, I think, more than anything else, because he relates to the position that Gabriel is in. R.J.’s an ex-con, R.J. was — it’s not that he went away for something he didn’t do, but R.J. did 18 months because someone gave false testimony in his trial, right? Gabriel certainly appears to have been framed. So I think he’s laser-focused on the case and not really thinking about how it would wash over Trudy, what it’ll mean to Emi to find out Trudy is out there. So I feel like that’s how we wrote him in the finale, and we’ll have to see. I think once he can take a breath, he’ll have to do some very grown-up thinking about who he wants to be with and why.

I loved what you did with R.J. and his dad this season. Could we see more of that in Season 3?

It was a treat and an honor to have Beau around. I had mentioned to someone at some point that Beau was a prototype for Dad for sure, and we do that sort of thing all the time; you cast someone in your head and you kind of write to who that person is as an actor and maybe certain roles that they’ve taken on before. Beau was one of those guys, but it never felt attainable. And so it was our great fortune to find out not only was Beau available, but interested. So, couldn’t have asked for a better Reggie Decker. He had terrific chemistry with Scott. They felt like father and son. There were scenes where you just bought it, and it’s a credit to both of them and how quickly they found their rhythm.

I’d love to see him back. Again, God willing, there’s a Season 3 and we can find something that lures Beau back again. But yeah, you can only ever cross your fingers and hope that two actors are going to do what they did together, but Beau crushed it and Scott was terrific with Beau, so we’ll see. We’d certainly love to make it happen again.

What else could we see in a Season 3?

If I had my druthers, we’d have a longer season, and we would have more time to flesh out and explore some of what is going on for Catherine, for Wish [Kevin Rankin], for Emi, as she tries to figure out her next big move. It was great fun, as I just said, to have Beau around playing Reggie. It was great to have Shantel around playing Trudy. But it affects the weight distribution of what you’re trying to do over the course of a season. I relish the opportunity to take advantage of episodes, to just dig a little deeper into the other members of the cast.

I think we absolutely did that in the finale with Mel, but I’d love to, just by way of example, go to the Broward County Herald with Catherine and see her workspace and see what she’s getting into and how might it turn into something that requires some assistance from R.J. and/or Mel. As we’ve discussed, we have Reggie to come back to, we have Jessica to come back to, we have Trudy to come back to. Great, exciting plans. I look forward to all that, but I also want to just tend our garden a little bit more, work with everybody who’s on the show week to week.

How would you say Emi and Mel are considering the end of Episode 6? That’s an interesting dynamic to begin with, but then to add that in and see where they are going forward…

I was actually there that night. It was a ton of fun to watch because in reality, Bevin and Jaina are pals. They were such fast friends when the show started, it tickled me to watch them go head-to-head like that. I don’t think Emi loved being approached that way, but she has a pretty high EQ and understands where Mel is coming from. I think that was a little evident in the proceeding episode when she tells R.J. about it. I think moving forward, Mel and Emi will be fine, but mostly because it speaks to who Emi is. She didn’t appreciate being ambushed, but she’s also mature enough to understand that this is very personal to Mel and triggered her a little.

What can you say about how Catherine’s going to handle this Jessica situation? Because I feel like this is when we could see the mama bear side of her coming out.

Here’s what I hope for, and I’m not trying to hide any cards: I think we took a big swing putting her family in jeopardy. It felt appropriate to the story. It felt true to who Jessica is. But it’s something we want to treat carefully and responsibly moving forward. There are avenues that you could go down coming out of an episode like the finale where different people could be traumatized by what’s going on. And yet we’re a show that, week to week, we owe a lot of color and fun and good humor and sunshine, so we just have to walk a careful line.

I don’t think Catherine is going to kung fu her way out of the situation because that feels not responsible enough or not mature enough. And yet I think we want to find a resolution that lets our characters get back into their more comfortable places and rhythms. So long way of saying I don’t know yet, but when we gather again as a writing staff, those would be the parameters I ask everyone to think within: Be true to who the character is, be true to how terrifying a situation like that may be, but let’s position our people to go through it, come out of it, and keep moving forward.

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