Emmy Rossum reveals the Furious finale clue viewers may have missed – and what season two could mean for Alice

For seven episodes, Furious has taken what initially appeared to be a cat-and-mouse thriller and steadily complicated it.

Created by Elizabeth Meriwether – the writer behind New Girl, The Dropout and Dying for Sex – and loosely inspired by Bob Rafelson’s 1987 psychological thriller Black Widow, the series follows FBI agent Alice Black (Emmy Rossum) as she pursues Catherine Grace (Lola Petticrew), a mysterious and calculating killer.

But beneath the chase, Furious has increasingly become a study of female victimhood, rage and what happens when women break from the limited roles society expects them to occupy. And heading into Monday’s finale, those ideas – and its three central women – are on a collision course.

Catherine is walking into a house where, as Rossum ominously points out, “more than one person wants her dead”. Emma Easton (Hope Davis) may hold the answer to the murder at the centre of the series. Then there is Alice, caught somewhere between justice and betrayal as she decides what to do with a potentially devastating tape that also blows open her own past.

“She wants to get justice and isn't sure what she wants to do about that tape,” Rossum tells The Standard.

Whatever Alice decides, viewers will finally discover the consequences when the eight-part thriller concludes on August 31, although her story is far from over. Hulu has already renewed Furious for a second season following a breakout first run, with the streamer reporting that US audiences have grown week-on-week since its July premiere.

For Rossum, who has been involved with the project alongside Meriwether for around three-and-a-half years, the destination of this first chapter was never a surprise. Exactly how they would get there, however, continued to evolve.

“We have always had an idea of where the first season would go, and an idea of how that would culminate, how we were going to get there has kind of like shifted,” she shares. “[Meriwether] has such a grasp of the world and the people so I feel like I knew where it was going and so I was spoiled from the beginning but it feels like the right ending and I think a lot is left open too.”

That is perhaps an understatement. Rossum promises an “explosive finale”, with “more secrets to be uncovered”, but there is one clue she thinks viewers should revisit before watching it – and it has been hiding in plain sight since the beginning. Alice, Catherine and Emma initially appear to occupy very different positions within the story, but Rossum says their physical behaviour has quietly connected them throughout the series.

“You can see that there’s three women, Alice, Catherine and Emma, that are all experiencing the world through their hands in a way,” she explains.

Lola Petticrew stars alongside Emmy Rossum in Disney+’s Furious

Disney

Alice uses “progressive muscle relaxation” to ground herself during moments of panic. Catherine, meanwhile, begins to feel sensation returning to her fingers as she reconnects with a body from which she has previously felt detached. Then, in episode seven, Emma plunges her hands into the soil and grips it.

“They’re all both wringing their hands with anger and also taking charge of their life in a way, or trying to get control of their life, or connecting to themselves,” Rossum explains.

It is, she says, the “connective tissue” between three characters viewers may not initially have realised had so much in common.

That parallel feels particularly significant going into the finale. Each woman is attempting, in very different and sometimes morally questionable ways, to wrestle back some control over her life.

For Catherine, that means walking directly towards danger in an attempt to uncover who killed Isabel. For Alice, it means confronting an increasingly uncomfortable question at the heart of the series: what does justice actually look like when the systems designed to deliver it have failed?

Hope Davis portrays Emma Easton in the eight-part series

Disney

It is territory Furious will now have another season to explore.

Before the renewal was announced, Rossum told The Standard she believes there is more stories left in these women and the compromises they make simply to survive.

“There is so much story to be told about women, about women’s experiences in contemporary society,” she says, “about how much we’ve had to play in this kind of patriarchal environment, and how much we’ve had to sacrifice, potentially even our own moral compass, in order to survive.”

That last point may prove particularly important for Alice.

Over eight episodes, the boundaries between investigator and subject, victim and perpetrator, justice and vengeance have become increasingly difficult to distinguish. Season two now has the opportunity to explore what remains of Alice’s moral certainty after whatever choice she makes in the finale.

Rossum is joined on screen by Quincy Tyler Bernstine, who plays Nora Washington

Disney

For Rossum, it has already made Alice unusually difficult to leave behind.

“This character is the most complicated and dynamic that I’ve ever gotten to play, and certainly required more of me,” she says. “I felt her skin on mine for longer after we wrapped than any other.”

Part of that connection comes from recognising something real beneath the thriller’s heightened circumstances.

“For a lot of women, there are a lot of things that might feel much more heightened in our show, but we’ll feel echoes of them in their soul,” Rossum says.

That may ultimately be Furious’ most unsettling proposition. Alice, Emma and Catherine may make choices most viewers never will, but the anger, fear and fight for control driving those choices are designed to feel much more familiar.

And with a second season now guaranteed, the question is no longer simply whether Alice will get justice. It is what she might have to become in order to get it.

Furious is available to stream now in the UK and Ireland on Disney+