‘Rescue: HI-Surf’ Boss Breaks Down Finale & Reveals If [Spoiler] Will Return in Season 2

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the Rescue: HI-Surf Season 1 finale “Em.”]

At least one character is saying goodbye to the North Shore by the end of Rescue: HI-Surf Season 1.

Em (Arielle Kebbel) is offered a sweet job working for a social media platform, and when she suggests Will (Adam Demos) join her, he turns her down — because he’s heading home to Australia for a bit. Other developments: Sonny (Robbie Magasiva) forces Vince (Moronai Kanekoa) to resign upon learning he’s been dealing drugs out of the tower and Laka (Kekoa Kekumano) is promoted to lieutenant. Below, creator Matt Kester breaks down the finale and teases what we could see in a second season (the show has yet to be renewed).

When did you know you wanted the first season to end with Will leaving? Why that ending for the finale?

Matt Kester: We brought Em and Will on this amazing journey. When we start out, they’re not estranged from each other, but they work together. They’re exes. There’s that kind of oddness. She still clearly has feelings for him, but he’s seemingly moved on, and we set up early on that Will’s partner, Julie, was not the right person for him, that he and Em still had these feelings together, and they’re both dancing around it, and then we see them do something [their affair] that seems somewhat inexplicable and a little bit reckless and kind of hurtful, you’re like, “What are you guys doing? This is terrible. What are you thinking?” Then we take them to a place where we understand a little bit about who they are as people and maybe why that explains a little bit of that behavior.

We didn’t want to completely put them together at the end because we felt that was too neat of a package. We wanted to allow them to stew in what they’ve done. We felt that Will especially had a bit of a comeuppance. He needed to be punished for his bad behavior. But there’s still this definite love and affection between them that we can play in hopefully a Season 2. We’ve got some great plans, hopefully, upcoming to what’s going to happen with that romantic relationship. But we did want to leave it in a place where the audience absolutely understood how much in love that they were and committed to each other, but didn’t necessarily get that “okay, now they’re going to be together” [ending] because hopefully we have a long show and we get to explore this relationship from a bunch of different angles.

It feels like Will needs to figure things out on his own. It’s not enough to get away on this temporary job with Em. They should not be going off together right now.

Totally. And he gets that. He understands that’s what it is. She’s more like, “Oh, I finally have my guy. I finally have what I want. Finally, we’re back together.” Where she’s had this cathartic experience with her mom, she’s figured some things out, he hasn’t had a chance to do that yet. He needs some time to go away and get his head right, and that’s what we were trying to set up, that he’s able to do that. The hope is that he comes back and they can be together. We’ll see what we can do about that in Season 2.

So he’ll definitely be back in Season 2?

Yeah, as far as — I love me some Adam Demos. I hope the audience does, too. He’s incredible. He’s a really good actor. We love working with him. Yeah, we’ll definitely be having Adam back.

What would it take for them to make a relationship work at this point?

There would have to be a very strong commitment to one another. The reason that they broke up and that their relationship didn’t work — and we get hints of it — [is] neither of them were quite ready. There were a lot of arguments. Sometimes it’s tough to live with somebody all day long and then sit in a tower with them all day long; there is almost too much closeness there. It would be easiest enough to get their relationship going if one of them didn’t work as a lifeguard, and that’s not going to happen. So we’re going to have to figure out, what is the special sauce that makes this relationship that they clearly both want, that they clearly both would love to work, how’s that going to happen for them? What’s going to be the thing that forces them together and forces them and everyone else to say, “Okay, this is a couple, this is a partnership, and they can make this work together both professionally and personally”?

Is Em taking that job alone?

Yeah. It’s an incredible opportunity for her that’s like, “Oh, wow, I can actually make some money.” It’s a very real thing that lifeguards are priced out of the housing market in Hawai’i. We live in one of the most expensive housing markets in the country, and we have these incredible first responders who keep us safe on the beach, and most of them don’t make enough money to buy the median income home on Oahu even at a great stage of their career. I think she’s going to do it and will be able to come back in a place where she’s feeling a little bit transformed, a little bit empowered, and she’s had some time and a break from Will and time to settle herself a little bit that I think will put her in a new head space when she’s thinking about her relationship with Will.

I think those two needed a break. They’ve been circling each other and they’ve got together and then they fought and they’ve gone back and forth and Will’s kind of gone down this dark path, nearly lost his job, and they need some time apart to recognize and realize what they love about each other and do they really want to make this work?

It feels like the others kind of need a break from that as well.

Yeah. They’re like, “Go get your thing done.”

We have Kainalu [Alex Aiono] and Hina, too. That’s been an incredible journey. They started off as rivals, then they really didn’t like each other, and then they ended up moving in together. She confesses her love and gets kind of rejected. One of the things I love so much about the season finale is you get to see these rookies, after all that they’ve gone together personally and professionally, leading a rescue — from when they first start in the tower and they know nothing and they’re just kind of like, “Oh my gosh, what is this job?” and they’re being trained by the more senior lifeguards, by Laka, Will, and Em, and they’re kind of seeing it all, and now we get to a place where, 19 episodes later, they’re running point on a really kind of harrowing rescue that takes them way offshore, and they succeed.

They’re both really good lifeguards, and they both really work together well. So all the cards are out on the table. They realize that they both have feelings for each other and so where’s that going to go? But I think the most satisfying journey for me was seeing our characters go from literally graduating in the academy to being full-fledged lifeguards on the North Shore and being confident in their abilities to save lives.

Speaking of them, I feel like when it’s clear to your girlfriend that your attention is elsewhere, the days are numbered on your relationship. So is that relationship going to be over by the time Season 2 picks up?

I think it’s one of those situations where we can play that a little bit longer. I think Rosie [Taylor Cooper] has real feelings for Kainalu, and he has real feelings for her. He’s like, “I enjoy this relationship. This is something that feels good, that feels healthy,” although sometimes the relationship that feels the best to us is not the best thing for us. I think that she’ll stick around for a little bit longer because she likes him and wants it to work, and Kainalu has found somebody in Rosie that he feels like, “Oh, she accepts me for exactly who I am and I don’t have to try and be someone else.” But yeah, there’s no way she can’t see that look at the party and realize that that’s what’s going on.

What made Laka’s journey to lieutenant the right one for him? He wants the responsibility now.

We all come to that place in our life. When we find Laka, he’s just having a good time, and he’s a lifeguard who’s enjoying his job more than everyone. He loves saving lives, but he loves meeting girls, he loves going out, he loves just kind of partying and having a good time. And we see the bad side of that — what happens to him when he gets robbed by the girls at the bar, we’ve seen it cost him a relationship that he was into with Jenn [Sea Shimooka], our EMS. Then I think he’s gone to a place where he’s like, “Okay, I’m growing up. I’m getting older. I’ve been given responsibility over these young recruits and done some training there. I’ve seen them grow.” The journey of Laka from playboy lifeguard having a good time to, “Okay, I need to get serious and save lives,” I think is the kind of professional journey that we like to see for someone like him.

But he’s never going to be our straight, serious character. That’s not in his nature. He loves to have fun, he loves to enjoy himself. I don’t think it’s going anywhere, but the idea that he takes on some more responsibilities at work — part of it is that Sonny saw in Laka a continuation of his legacy. And I like to think even though we’ve only hinted at it on screen, that all of these lifeguards, Sonny had his kind of young and wild [time] and he’s doing all this stuff and he sees like, “Hey, man, that’s all got to end sometime. At some point in time, you have to put away those childish things and you have to become a man and you have to figure out what this is and what this job is.”

Certainly, Em’s done it, right? She is a natural leader and she’s taken that leadership role, and she’s upset at Laka for not doing it in the beginning of the season. And so to see him say, “Okay, I’m going to take on this mantle of leadership because Sonny sees this in me,” I think there’s also something when you have somebody, a mentor, you look up to, and that person tells you the difficult truth of, you’re not living up to your full potential, it’s something that sticks with you. And I’ve enjoyed seeing him live up to that potential when he has to and become the lifeguard that he knows he can be.

Vince did sign that letter of resignation, but it also feels like that storyline may not be completely over, whether it directly involves Vince or what Sonny did to make that happen. Is that something that Sonny needs to be worried about?

What we see in that is this hint that Sonny had to call in a favor from an unsavory character, somebody that he knew from his past. It gets to this thing of everybody on the North Shore knows one another, and there’s all these connections that we have and we never really can kind of escape our past because, I know you from 25 years ago, and even though this is who you are now, I remember who you were before. Sonny has to dip his toe back into that world to get rid of Vince and to keep it so there’s not some big scandal and so it keeps the name of the Department of Ocean Safety and the lifeguards in good stead. I think there’ll definitely have to be some kind of, not comeuppance for him, but that’s going to come back. He called in a favor to somebody that you don’t want to owe something to. And so that’ll be something that in Season 2 likely comes back to bite him in some way.

How are you feeling about the chances of a second season?

I feel good. I’m always positive, and we have a ton more stories to tell. I think people are finding the show. I’m really heartened that a ton of people watch the show with their family. That makes me really happy. That was one of my goals, that people can watch the show and enjoy it as an adult, they can enjoy it with their 10-year-old, with their 6-year-old, with their teenager, and there’s kind of something for everybody. There’s not a lot of programming like that. And I really feel grateful to Fox, Hulu, [and] Warner Brothers for allowing us to create that kind of show. I think people are still finding it and the people who do find it love it. So hopefully we’ll get a chance to keep going on it.

What can you tease about what we could see in a second season?

I think in the second season of any television show, you’re going to introduce some new characters. I don’t want to tease too much because I don’t want to spoil the dynamic that we’re going to see necessarily in our North Shore rescue team, but I think we can look forward to some new characters in Season 2 that will not only round out the dynamic that we have but complicate it in a way that’s interesting and give some challenges for our characters.

Would those new characters be completely new to the existing characters or just new to the audience?

Both. I think those characters will be completely new to our existing characters. We want to introduce somebody that they don’t know, that they have to deal with who enters our world in a way that we find interesting. Just throwing a wrench in the dynamic as one often finds in a workplace  — Rescue: HI-Surf is a workplace drama. I think any good workplace drama is also a family drama because when you work together in such a high-stakes job with people, you get close, they become your family.

And when I was pitching this, and of course I’m pitching this with John Wells, I was like, “Hey, when you watch ER, the entry point into the show is somebody walks through the doors of the ER, somebody walks up to the front desk and says, ‘I’m hurt. I have this, I have this, I have this.’” Where in our show, the entry point is that tower. People cross that beach and they walk up to that tower and you see exactly, okay, this is what’s going to happen here. And so that will continue to be that kind of dynamic. Oahu’s the gathering place and there’s people who come from all over the world, across the beach, whether they’re the greatest surfers on earth or somebody who’s never seen the ocean before. The lifeguards have to deal with all of it, so we’ll continue to see them doing that.

With the small community, there could be someone coming in who’s new to the audience but has a strong relationship with one of the characters, and then to see that person fit in could be really interesting….

Yep, absolutely. And the great thing about doing it in a small town like that is there’s a ton of characters. There’s a ton of people that our lifeguards know, but the audience hasn’t met. And then also when somebody enters into that small town world like that, you get to watch how they fit into all of it. It’s a fun dynamic to explore.