Eoin Macken Previews ‘La Brea’ Series Finale: ‘It Ends With a Lot of Hope’

“Everything they did in this final episode, they did it in a way that’s a little bit different that you’re going to really like,” La Brea star Eoin Macken promises. “It’s a beautiful ending.”

The NBC drama wraps up its three-season run on February 13, and Gavin (Macken) and Izzy (Zyra Gorecki) are positioned to reunite with the rest of their family, with all signs pointing to Eve (Natalie Zea) and Josh (Jack Martin) both being in 1965. (Josh went through the red aurora earlier in the season, and the coordinates of the detention center where Eve is being held were right where that aurora was found in the penultimate episode.)

Below, Macken previews how the drama ends.

There’s a real lead in the search for Eve. What can you preview about what awaits them in 1965 and those reunions with Eve and Josh that have to be coming?

Eoin Macken: The finale, I think, is, as I said, my favorite episode of La Brea. There’s a really great story arc that happens with Josh and Gavin, with Jack Martin and myself, that we had a lot of fun doing, that I think was really important for the characters. And I think that it’s similar in a way, but obviously in a microcosm, to how Izzy had to grow up. And I think that Josh’s character grew up, especially when he went into the portal at the start of Episode 1. He hadn’t really been listening to his father, and Josh had been kind of slightly doing his own thing, and they’d also been at odds, obviously. And so that was really important for those two characters to be on the same page.

Gavin and Eve’s relationship is so complicated, so what can you say about what we’re going to see there?

I think it’s complicated, but also you realize at the end of it that Gavin and Eve loved each other and that they’ve had these kids and this family and they go through these extreme circumstances, but they still want to be together.

It seems like Gavin can be optimistic at this point. He’s going to where he’s told Eve and Josh probably are. His relationship with his sister (Emily Wiseman) is working out after he saved her from that giant alligator…

Right? Yeah, I mean, one could only hope at this stage. I think hope is the only thing he’s got left.

Mark Taylor/NBC

With all this traveling in time, now going to 1965, where Helena wants to destroy Maya’s infrastructure, does Gavin care what year he and his family permanently land in, or is it just as long as they’re together?

I don’t think he cares at this stage. I think he just wants all of this to stop and just to be with his family. I think the only important thing is probably that they still have some kind of relatively good healthcare so that they can all go to therapy, and ideally, the later on in time it is, so there are new techniques that might help. Some family therapy is probably a good thing at this stage.

What can you preview about how the series ends in general and for Gavin?

The final scenes give you the ending that I think the characters deserve. What’s very cool about this is [that] sometimes, you don’t always get that with a television show, with the characters, for a myriad of different reasons. I think because of what happened and how this show became structured, they were very clever in how they completed the show and the characters’ journeys, and it’s going to be really satisfying, and it ends with a lot of hope. It’s still not simple, but it ends with a lot of hope. And I think that’s really important.

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Might we see characters at the end in different time periods? For example, Ty’s (Chiké Okonkwo) wife Paara (Tonantzin Carmelo) is in 10,000 BC.

I think all the characters end up sort of on the journey that they’re supposed to be on in the end and the place they’re supposed to be that feels right.

How will you remember the show and remember Gavin?

I had so much fun. I’m going to remember it with a lot of nostalgia because finishing a show and knowing you’re finishing it when you’re shooting it, I’ve only ever—actually, I had that on The Night Shift, but one of the big things I had that on was on Merlin, and we were finishing the ending, and we knew we were finishing it and it was quite sad. And with this, it was similar, where knowing that you’re not going to work together anymore is kind of sad, but it also made it so much fun because it meant you really poured everything into it. And I really loved all the people I met in Australia, and I loved working in Australia. This season especially was very special. So yeah, I had so much fun, and I’m really sad that the show ended, but at the same time, it also ended in a way whereby it felt like we’d actually created something and achieved something good, and it actually was satisfying.

La Brea, Series Finale, Tuesday, February 13, 9/8c, NBC