Allow us to clear up any confusion: Thursday’s episode of “Elsbeth”\u00a0was merely a season finale, and not a series finale. But you wouldn’t be blamed for thinking otherwise.<\/p>\n
After all, the hour ended on a distinctly upbeat note, with the kind of positivity typically reserved for a show’s last episode. Elsbeth (Carrie Preston) had successfully solved another murder, she was briefly reunited with detective pal Kaya (Carra Patterson) in the process, and her son, Teddy (Ben Levi Ross), had gotten engaged. The episode closed with Elsbeth chatting about Broadway musicals with a passerby, and Elsbeth’s earnest question to the woman \u2014 “Isn’t it great to love things?” \u2014 served as the final line of dialogue.<\/p>\n
According to showrunner Jonathan\u00a0Tolins, the finale’s optimistic ending wasn’t born from any concern about the show’s fate. In fact, “Elsbeth”\u00a0had already been renewed for Season 4<\/a> well before the finale was filmed, and it wouldn’t have been creatively risky to end Season 3 on a cliffhanger of some kind. Tolins and the “Elsbeth”\u00a0writers, though, had a different approach in mind.<\/p>\n “We knew we were coming back, but we had already set the basic idea for the episode. We knew we wanted to do a musical episode again,”\u00a0Tolins tells TVLine. “I’m very happy with the last line of the episode, which is the last line of the season. ‘Isn’t it great to love things?’ I think that’s something the character of Elsbeth gives the world \u2014 that you don’t have to be jaded and cynical, despite what’s going on.”<\/p>\n