LMOE finale: Will Forte on that 'bonkers' twist ending—and what happens inayofuata | EW 

'Last Man on Earth' season finale: 7 hints from Will Forte

'Last Man on Earth' sneak peek: Phil and Carol talk about Carol having sex with Phil

'Last Man on Earth' recap: 'The Tandyman Can'

[SPOILER ALERT: Do not read on if you haven’t seen, “Screw the Moon,” Sunday night’s episode of

Well, that’s one way to end a season. Actually, make that

ways. Sunday night’s season-ending episode of Fox post-apocalyptic comedy 

gave us a double whopper of a cliffhanger/twist that fired the imagination with possibility. In the final minutes of the finale, we watched as Phil, er, Tandy (Will Forte) was banished from the cul-de-sac by New Phil (Boris Kodjoe), who dumped him on a lonely desert road with only two days of supplies (which he promptly ate). Luckily, Carol (Kristen Schaal) arrived with more snacks, and more importantly, companionship: After listening to the romantic song he wrote about her, she surprised him by saying that she’d join him on his adventure to points unknown. And then things got “bonkers,” as series star/creator Will Forte had promised. As those two drove off, we ventured into deep space, where, as it turns out, Tandy’s brother (played by Jason Sudeikis, and previously seen only in a photograph) has been floating around on a spacecraft, crossing off the days that have been spent futilely trying to contact anyone back on Earth. The finale concluded with him gazing forlornly out the window at our planet, set to the tune of “Supersonic Rocket Ship” by The Kinks. (Jason Sudeikis is…

.) Got a few questions orbiting your brain? Of course you do. Which is why EW rang up Forte for some answers.

Where on Earth are Phil and Carol headed? And what does this mean for all of those other characters that joined the show later in the season? Forte cautions that the plotting of season 2 is in the embryonic stages, though he notes, “I have one idea that would be a really fun first episode. It is fair to say that you haven’t seen the last of the old new gang, despite Phil’s banishment. “Obviously we’re not going to

show Mary Steenburgen or Cleopatra [Coleman] or Mel [Rodriguez] or January [Jones] or Boris,” he says. “They’re so important to the show. There’s a lot of room for play and it opens us up to having some time where the characters are once again in a very desolate situation. We really want to open up the world and look at the starting up of a society again with just a small group of people and basic rules…. Phil is not allowed on the cul-de-sac right now. It is entirely possible that Phil and Carol could be living somewhere else for the whole season, and we’re checking in on the different people. But I would think that they would

Is Phil truly going to try this time to make a relationship with Carol work? “Is this just a situation of you want what you can’t have, or is he truly in love with her?” Forte asks right back. “That’s how we go into season 2. They’re still totally different people and they have such different world views, we still think it’s going to be really fun to see how they act as a couple. Not in any way would I ever compare it to this, but an Archie-and-Edith type situation, or Sam and Diane—that’s what you shoot for, these two different people who just somehow are together.”

When did Carol decide to stay with Tandy? While you might be wondering if she had a change of heart before she left the cul-de-sac— as she told him in the desert, “I don’t want to be with a man who can leave someone in the desert to die; I want to be with the man who doesn’t have the heart to go through with it”— that was not her intention when driving out to meet him in the middle of nowhere, according to Forte. “In our minds, Carol came out to the desert just to give him supplies,” he says. “She had no clue that she would be ending up with him and it just kind of hits her after the song. When he told her about the song, she didn’t believe him immediately. He’s told her a million things. We edited the show a million different ways, and it used to be edited in a way that you

didn’t believe that he had written a song, so we put a lot on that song. You can tell that Phil actually took the time to write this song and was feeling very real feelings toward Carol. [Click here to read more about the song, which was written by cast member Mary Steenburgen

It’s an impulsive decision that she makes and Phil even says, ‘I think you’re making a really bad decision here.’ But she’s willing to take the chance and Phil really appreciates that.”

Where did he and the writers get the idea for Phil’s brother to be stuck in space? Sorry to disappoint, but its origins do not date back to “Potato Chip,” a

 NASA sketch featuring Forte and Sudeikis.  “As early as the pilot, when we were thinking about including flashbacks, we would talk about Phil’s relationship with different members of his family,” says Forte. “We had this idea for a brother that was much more successful than he was, and even had written a scene in which his mother is trying to give him a pep talk, and they’re at some dinner, and his brother the senator/astronaut is introducing him at a big speech, and it really takes the wind out of the pep-talk sails.” While finishing up a draft of a script from the middle of the season, he recalls he simply tacking on the space shocker at the end. “The original idea was to introduce it in episode 5 or 6, and then every couple of episodes cut to him doing something up there,” he says. “But then we just decided it would be more fun to end [the season] on this discovery… Jason is a close friend, and he was, thank God, willing to do it.”

When will we see more of Phil’s brother? And how often will we see him? Much of that answer hinges on the calendar of Mr. Sudeikis. “We’re still trying to figure out what his involvement will be,” says Forte. “I mean, he’s got a freakin’ huge movie career, so it’s exciting to have him involved in whatever way he can be.”

Will Brother Miller be trapped in his spacecraft for a while? Or will he somehow make it back to Earth sooner than later? “I don’t see him being up in space forever,” hints Forte, adding: “He used to live in Tucson as well, so it seems natural that he might try to go back and see what’s going on with his hometown.”

a brother. So are we to assume that Phil assumed that he died in the virus or was just lost in space? “We had written that in several different ways,” explains Forte. “Phil said [to Carol], ‘Well, I have a brother. Excuse me—

a brother.” But we just decided to say “had a brother,” as if he just assumed that he was no longer living.

What can we expect from the lone astronaut and his dynamic with Phil? “Phil was a temp and his brother is an astronaut, so Phil has always been a little frustrated by how successful his brother was and he got a lot of attention,” says Forte. “So that’s kind of a hint as to what their relationship might be like.”

NEXT: Forte on virus flashbacks and cast additions

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