‘The Big Door Prize’ Team Talks [Spoiler]’s Proposal, That Long Hug & More

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Big Door Prize Season 2 Episodes 1 “The Next Stage,” 2 “Visions,” and 3 “Power & Energy.”]

Apple TV+‘s heartwarming and entertaining dramedy The Big Door Prize returns for its second season in a major way: The three episodes that drop on premiere day feature a proposal, a (temporary?) split, the next stage of the Morpho machine, and a hug that will have people talking.

Hana (Ally Maki), who had worked at a bar with a Morpho machine previously, reveals she started getting the blue dots that some have and doesn’t know what causes them. It’s not much, but it’s still more than Hana has opened up thus far, and Episode 3 even shows her bonding a bit with Cass (Gabrielle Dennis). But what also makes Hana stand apart from the others is that she never used the Morpho machine. Is that something she regrets?

“I think Hana’s just a mystery all around and she’s constantly dealing with the push-pull of her decisions and what has happened in her past and how that’s informing who she is now. So I don’t know if she fully regrets it, but I think she’s starting to think about things whereas before, anytime anything gets slightly uncomfortable or dives into her past, she just runs from it,” Maki tells TV Insider. “What’s really fascinating about Season 2 is it’s the first time she’s committing to something beyond that uncomfortable period. We’ve all been there where we’re like, what would happen if we stayed? What would happen if we didn’t run away from this? I think she’s still figuring it out.”

Once the next stage of the machine is triggered, people insert their Morpho cards and are shown pixelated versions of themselves; Dusty’s (Chris O’Dowd) skiing in Whistler and now wonders if he should have stayed longer instead of coming back because he loved Cass, who sees herself stabbing both her mother and her husband (and dancing on his body). At this point, Dusty and Cass have already decided to take some time apart (six weeks)—a self-ploration—and then come back together.

With that time, Dusty “wants some kind of answer as to whether this relationship is right,” says O’Dowd. “He has so little other frame of reference for what his life would be like because he spent so much of it with Cass that it really is difficult. It’s not like he’s somebody who goes from relationship to relationship. He’s hoping to solidify the situation, and that isn’t necessarily what happens.”

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Meanwhile, Cass is hoping to “find herself and be a better woman and a more powerful woman and a better example for her daughter,” according to Dennis. “The goal is self-improvement, to step out on her own. She’s never really had a night alone in all these years. ‘If I take the time to give to myself, what can that look like?'”

They are allowed to see other people during this time apart, and Dusty does go out for dinner with a colleague, Alice (Justine Lupe), a night that ends with a hug that starts out awkward, actually becomes a little sweet, and just keeps going.

“Being slightly emotionally available to another human being isn’t something that he’s done in a little while,” admits O’Dowd. “So having somebody give him a little bit of a spark in his belly is going to be disconcerting one way or another.”

Creator David West Read reveals that the idea for that came from one of the writers who “had a friend who had a date like this with an uncomfortably long hug because he just wasn’t sure how to end the date. I like that in the show, it rides that line between incredibly awkward and incredibly sweet because Dusty is so out of his element being on his first first date in so many years. This is someone who’s been with his high school sweetheart and is now 40 years old. And so even though the way Chris plays it, it’s very funny to see him holding onto this new person not knowing what to do, there’s something relatable about someone trying to do something that they haven’t done for a long time and struggling.”

Going forward, “a lot of the second season is exploring this love triangle between a person that Dusty has so much closeness and history with and a person who’s new and exciting and they both offer different things and he’s very torn between them,” he adds.

Apple TV+

Elsewhere in these first three episodes, Nat (Mary Holland) becomes a bit concerned that, just as she and Giorgio (Josh Segarra) have gotten together, Cass and Dusty announce their separation. But Nat doesn’t have to worry about Giorgio’s past feelings for Cass—he proposes! She, of course, says yes. But why have Giorgio propose to Nat when he does (it’s fast!)? Was it the right decisions? Those questions will be explored in Season 2, confirms Read.

“We love the idea of someone who had, for the entire first season and many of the years previous, been in love with someone else suddenly completely switching paths and going all in on a new relationship,” he explains. “It feels very Giorgio who goes all in on everything to also get just swept up in the romance of it. But we really love both of these characters. We love them together, and even if they get together very quickly, over the course of the season, I think they realize that they might be a better match than anyone thought they would be.”

Adds Segarra, “to Giorgio, it’s not fast. It’s right on time. I think everything he does is hard and fast and passionate and he’s very thankful that he has Nat in his life now because now you’re going to see him become the superstar that he was always meant to be.”

What do you think of these developments? What are you hoping to see in the rest of the season? Let us know in the comments section, below.

The Big Door Prize, Wednesdays, Apple TV+