‘A Million Little Things’ Boss on Gary’s Finale Move: He Thinks ‘He Has Nothing to Lose’

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the A Million Little Things Season 3 finale “Justice.”]

So much happens in the two-part finale that we’re going to have to just do a quick rundown to get through it all, but the major question we’re left with for A Million Little Things Season 4 is simple: What is Gary (James Roday Rodriguez) about to do?!

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In the final moments, just as Sophie (Lizzy Greene) speaks out on Maggie’s (Allison Miller) podcast about her assault and names Peter (Andrew Leeds), Gary takes the man hostage in his own home. Elsewhere, Eddie (David Giuntoli) has his world turned upside down right after he and Katherine (Grace Park) agree to a custody plan: The person who hit him in last season’s finale calls to confess. Plus, Regina (Christina Moses) decides to close her restaurant, and Delilah (Stephanie Szostak) announces her plan to move the kids to France.

TV Insider turned to creator DJ Nash to (try to) find out what’s next.

Considering this wasn’t a spontaneous decision and he even planned out an alibi, what exactly is Gary’s plan? How does he think this will end — for Peter and for himself?

DJ Nash: Oh, I am simply not going to tell you that. [Laughs] How long have we been doing these? You are catching many things. He did plan this alibi. So whatever happened behind that door is premeditated.

It seemed like there was a moment where I thought maybe he had decided to leave when Peter opened the door, but there’s no hesitation on his part, right?

Our show has card flips, so I understand your reason to think maybe it’s something else. What I love about the reaction I’ve heard from the few people I’ve talked to who’ve seen the finale is you think he must be knocking on a different door. You think he’s not going to be there because there’s always a card flip on A Million Little Things, but it does not appear like that card has been flipped.

ABC/Jack Rowand

What did you want to do with Gary’s anger this season to lead up to that?

It even goes back before the season. Because if you think about Season 1, him taking this painting off the wall that his best friend gave him during chemo and being so angry that friend is gone that he smashed it to the ground. Or if you think about him punching a car that was driving by him and that man got out with a gun and thankfully he didn’t pull the trigger. He went to Eric in the music store and started pushing him around. Gary clearly has some anger issues. He punched the glass of his car after dropping Sophie off at the airport, so we’re seeing someone who is hurting and he’s been hurting for a while and he’s struggling and desperate for family. When his mom walked out on him, that probably was the start of his desperation to redefine family in some way.

He met a guy in an elevator. They all became friends. That guy took his life. We’ve seen Gary propose to Maggie. We’ve seen him treat these two children like they’re his kids, and now they’re moving to France. Now he feels so much guilt over circling back with Peter and making Peter, who had not given Sophie a second thought, not only ask to see her privately, but Gary was the person who said her dad’s gone, her mom’s not in town. He basically gave him all the information he needed to groom her. So he’s carrying a tremendous amount of guilt, whether he should or shouldn’t. And obviously, he’s not processing it in the right way.

Would he have gone to Peter’s if he and Delilah didn’t have that blow up?

I think what we see in our series from the very beginning is these very small, delicate things can change huge events. If Gary hadn’t called about Jon, would Rome still be here? If Jon hadn’t died that day, would Eddie have left with Delilah? The sliding doors of life get forever changed by a small little moment. If Theo hadn’t come down looking for that hockey stick, would Eddie have had a drink? Had he not pushed the booze away in last season’s finale, would he have been hit by a car?

ABC/Jack Rowand

Yes, I think if Delilah had said, “I’m staying,” maybe there’s some sense of family that Gary would have had. Earlier in the episode, Delilah says, “There’s not a night I go to sleep that I don’t think I could have been better as a parent, Gary, that’s what makes you a great parent.” Maybe she would have been able to talk him down, but as it is, he’s feeling like he has nothing to lose and he has every desire to get justice.

Delilah says things that were both a long time coming and really show another side of her and her grief. I’m now rooting for her, and I have to admit she was never my favorite character.

That makes me so happy to hear. When I look on social media, I think sometimes the criticism of our characters is not evenly distributed. I feel like the female characters for whatever reason have to be more perfect than the male characters. She’s someone who lost someone to suicide and right from the beginning, she admitted, “I’ve made bad choices, I’ve made mistakes.” She is paying for those mistakes. But I think hopefully that scene allows us to see a side of Delilah and a side of someone who’s lost someone to suicide that we don’t always get to see.

I’ve met many survivors of suicide since this show has been on the air. Quite a few of them work on the show. The common thing I have seen is this idea that there are feelings and hurt and anger that you feel like you may not be justified to express. We wanted to give Delilah a chance to express that. Obviously, her coming back in, she wasn’t there when her son came out at school, she was not there when her daughter was assaulted. We’re trying to construct that balance, giving her a justified reason to go to France. She’s giving her dad one last trip and then he falls and then COVID hits. But we wanted to have the show, like it always does, live in the grays. It’s not black and white. And just when you think you know someone, you don’t.

ABC/Jack Rowand

It seems like Eddie’s finally in as good a place as he can be in this finale, making that custody agreement with Katherine. And then he gets that call: “I’m the person who hit you.” Are we supposed to recognize that voice?

Is that an actor we know?

Yes.

I would leave it to next season for us to see. I’m curious to see what social media has to say about that. Is that a voice we’ll hear again? Yes.

How much is Eddie going to be struggling and fighting to not return to the person he was earlier this season after that call?

That’s exactly what we all face. Just when we think we are resolved on something, another thing comes from left field that upends all of it. Think about Sophie in this episode — she goes from victim to survivor. She’s ready to have justice in her own way, even though she can’t get it legally, she’s going to tell her story. She’s taking the mic back. And she has agency in her own destiny and then Gary knocks on Peter’s door and threatens all of that.

ABC/Jack Rowand

In a very similar way, you see Eddie, who has struggled with sobriety prior to the accident and have this accident, rise to be this father with true grit. When he goes to get Theo that video game, that wasn’t just about a video game. It was about him saying, “I’m not going to let my son down.” He really is determined to do that. He’s determined to be sober for his son. He’s determined to be this role model for his son. And then a call comes, which threatens to resurface his anger, it threatens to challenge his sobriety, all of it, and what that he does with that and how that affects him is exactly what we’re watching Eddie go through.

Gary and Darcy [Floriana Lima] are moving forward, talking about having kids one day, and he’s thinking about moving with her. But at the same time, it seems like Gary and Maggie are a knock on the door away from a reunion. So what is coming up with that triangle?

One knock away from a reunion, I like that tagline. Gary and Maggie love each other. And I think what that means and how that will manifest itself is evolving at all times. It really does mean “I’m going to be with you at your side, make sure you’re okay after your abortion.” It does mean “I’m gonna hold your hand as you and I deal with taking care of this young woman who’s been assaulted.” I think we’ve seen them in a platonic way have a relationship that any of us would be so grateful to have.

In terms of Darcy and Gary, where we leave them in the finale is at first we think she doesn’t want to have kids. And then she takes a step back and realizes, “I said that when I didn’t realize you would be the father of those kids and nothing would be better than doing that with you.” That’s the message it appears that she’s leaving on the voicemail. Unfortunately, it doesn’t get to Gary in time.

ABC/Jack Rowand

What we’re going to be watching next year is how Gary’s relationships with both of those women are affected by whatever he did at Peter’s and by whoever may find out about it.

A Million Little Things, Season 4, Fall 2021, ABC