Before we begin, please stop reading if you haven’t made it to the “Winter” season episodes, 7 and 8, of The Four Seasons. You’ll thank us later.
THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS MAJOR CHARACTER OR PLOT DETAILS.
Series co-creators Tina Fey, Lang Fisher, and Tracey Wigfield wrote the eight cozy and incisive episodes of The Four Seasons as a love letter to long-term relationships, both romantic and platonic. “Sometimes when you are struggling with something with just your spouse, you need a group of friends to bring humor to it. Those friendships really help marriages,” said Fey. “The marriage is the whole group, I think, and they’re there to support each other.”
Based on Alan Alda’s 1981 film, the series follows a group of lifelong friends as they vacation together each season of the year. They start off as three couples: Kate (Fey) and Jack (Will Forte), Nick (Steve Carell) and Anne (Kerri Kenney-Silver), and Danny (Colman Domingo) and Claude (Marco Calvani). Early on, Nick stuns everyone by divorcing Anne and starting a new relationship with the significantly younger Ginny (Erika Henningsen). It certainly takes an adjustment, but the friend group endures, even as the configuration takes a new shape. Just as things seem to have found a rhythm, with the former couple sharing custody of their vacations with their friends by New Year’s Eve, tragedy strikes.
In a shocking twist (and a departure from the film), Nick dies in a car accident at the end of Episode 7. The final episode, wryly called “Fun,” picks up as they all struggle to plan Nick’s celebration of life back home. But that’s not the only bombshell dropped in the finale that will change this group of friends’ lives forever. Below, Tudum hears from the cast and creators about which couples thrive and survive, why they killed Nick, other changes from the film, and more.
Why does Nick die in The Four Seasons finale?
When the creative team dreamed up a vision for how the series would stand on its own while still honoring the original film, they thought about, “What are things that are really, really human-scale that can happen?” said Fey. “And having someone die is something that, the older you get, the more that starts to happen.” Wigfield sees the middle-aged stage of life as the one where you particularly need old friendships who have seen you through your darkest times thus far. “Those are the people that you really need to lean on when things are bad,” she said.
They chose Nick because, “in a way, it just works. Steve’s character is the character that was like, ‘I only live once, life is short. I’m going to do what I want.’ And he was right,” said Fey. In hindsight, the creatives agree he was right to make the move that he made in his life. But after the cast found out, Fey says that Henningsen kept walking around all day saying, “You killed Gru. I hope you’re happy that you killed Gru.”
How did Steve Carell and the rest of the cast react to Nick’s death in The Four Seasons?
“It is a running joke now that I die in every TV show that I’m in,” said Carell. “I’ve died in the last two, and now I die in this one. I hope to continue to die in TV shows well into the future.” In all seriousness, Carell found Nick’s death heartbreaking. “It’s really sad to me, because everybody is so delightful and nice, and with any luck they get to continue on with this story.”
Carell knew Nick’s fate from the beginning, but the rest of the cast didn’t know until the table read. “When we got on that Zoom, everybody was so sad,” said Kenney-Silver. After reading Episode 7’s script, Domingo considered it a “punch in the gut.” His fellow actors saw Nick as the glue of the group, as his choice to change his life forces all the other characters to start reevaluating theirs. “For someone who had divorced his wife and created chaos within these friend groups, it was such a loss because we were already losing him a little bit before, but now we’ve fully lost him,” said Domingo.
“Also, the character is about to fully get a real transformation,” adds Calvani. “He’s taken [away] in a moment where his character is asking himself different questions.” But Henningsen says that Carell himself brought up a good point: there’s only so long they can sustain the tension of a younger woman being a part of this friend group before that storyline can lose steam. “He felt this sort of loss would really throw a ton of things into perspective for this whole group in a way that would catalyze, hopefully, a next chapter for all of them,” she said.
What other changes were made from the original 1981 film?
Since they were expanding the story from a two-hour movie into an eight-episode series, the creators made longer arcs for each character — especially for Anne, who was played by Sandy Dennis in the film. When Kenney-Silver joined the cast, she wasn’t necessarily told what Anne’s expanded storyline would be. “It was all a delicious surprise,” she says. “If they were going to use me for one scene and then be done with me, I was ready for that.” But as she saw how many episodes she was going to be in, she knew something was coming.
In the movie, “the character kind of falls away after the divorce,” said Fey. “We don’t really follow her as much as the other remaining couples. So in this iteration of the story, we wanted to hear from Anne a little bit more on how this divorce impacted her, and how she’s going to grow from it.”
Wigfield sees Anne’s storyline of having to start over after being married for 25 years as juicy and interesting. “Is it even worth starting over? And how do you interact with your friends, and your kid, and your ex-husband, when you thought your life was going to look completely different?” she said. Fisher admires Kenney-Silver for doing so much heavy lifting in the series, because her heart is broken, and her life is destroyed. “We watched her do this incredible balancing act of still nailing the comedy while playing the most authentic, emotional moments at the same time.”
Another update to the story is that Domingo and Calvani are a gay couple. In the film, their kindred couple was a male-female relationship, played by Jack Weston and Rita Moreno. “I love that they’re based on characters in the original film, but tweaked a little,” said Domingo. Calvani wasn’t familiar with the film before joining the cast, but was very pleased when Domingo told him over the phone that he was playing Moreno’s character. “It’s every gay man’s dream to be Rita Moreno. So, I proudly achieved that.” An additional element to the update is that Danny and Claude are in an open relationship, which Fey says is not the source of their marital strengths or weaknesses. “That’s their agreement, that’s how they live, but they have other marital problems. There’s no set up in which you can really escape some kind of struggle within a relationship.”
Do Anne and Ginny reach common ground in The Four Seasons finale?
After Nick’s death, it’s hard for Anne to plan a celebration of life for a man who, as she says, didn’t want her in his life at the end. Yet, it’s also hard for her to let Ginny help plan any part of the funeral. “Listen, she’s hurt,” says Kenney-Silver. “I believe what she is mostly trying to do is keep up the guise in her mind that her relationship with Nick meant more than [his relationship with Ginny] did. And at the end of the day, that doesn’t matter.”
Protecting her friend, Kate even goes so far as to tell Ginny that she was just an eight-month “blip” in the span of Anne and Nick’s 25-years together. That’s very difficult for Ginny to hear, as in her mind, her affection and love for Nick was real and substantial. To her, “it [didn’t] feel like a rebound or something that [was] going to quickly fade into the ether of both of their lives,” said Henningsen.
To pour more salt in everyone’s wounds, while she’s on stage at the funeral, Anne realizes that she really doesn’t know Nick anymore. But she still refuses to let Ginny speak, and by the time they get home, Ginny’s had enough. “His death gives Ginny the courage to stand up to them,” said Henningsen. Anne later finds an inconsolable Ginny freezing outside, really grieving for the first time. “It’s such pure grief that it catches Anne off guard,” said Henningsen. The scene is deeply uncomfortable for the characters, but healing at the same time.
“I really valued filming that scene with Kerri because you can sense that they don’t quite know how to console one another. What do you do when the girlfriend of your ex-husband who has just passed away is sitting in your backyard sobbing about his loss?” said Henningsen. “These two people are so different [with] shared love for the same person in totally different capacities. But they find similar footing there, and that allows them to turn towards one another instead of away from one another.”
Anne is able to comfort Ginny by confirming that her relationship with Nick wasn’t just a blip, and her ex-husband seemed as happy as she’d ever seen him. “Her terror was that if his relationship with Ginny was real, then that somehow negates her 25 years with Nick,” says Kenney-Silver. Through their “come to Jesus” moment outside, Anne “realizes both things can be true — that they really did love one another, and she had a real 25 years with a child, with ups and downs and all the things that come with it.”
Their newfound truce leads Ginny to confide in Anne that, shockingly, she’s pregnant — albeit off-screen.
Henningsen doesn’t think Ginny letting the cat out of the bag was premeditated at all. She doesn’t think she’d even planned on telling the group anytime soon, let alone Nick’s ex-wife on the day of his funeral. But “she feels so raw and vulnerable in that moment, carrying two secrets,” says Henningsen. Aside from her pregnancy, she’d also been holding in her grief that he’d gone on a grocery run to make amends with her after their fight. So her heartfelt conversation with Anne emboldens Ginny to share her innermost truths with the one person she’d least expected. “She’s like, ‘I just have to get this off my chest, and you’re in front of me and I feel love from you and I need to tell you this, or it’s going to eat me alive,’” says Henningsen.
Kenney-Silver and Henningsen never discussed what their characters might have said off-screen, but Kenney-Silver sees the reveal as a full-circle moment for Anne. “Anne’s happy place is care-taking and, maybe more than care-taking, is being needed,” she says. And this new, unexpected thread to her old life [that] she thought she’d lost helps refuel her sense of purpose.
Wait, Ginny’s pregnant in The Four Seasons finale?
Yup! In the final scene of the season, Ginny doesn’t join in on the round of drinks among the friends, which everyone notices. Instead, she defers to Anne as the lady of the house. With one look, she gives Anne permission to confirm what they’re all thinking — that yes, indeed, she’s pregnant — before the credits start to roll. “It let the air out of the balloon for everyone,” says Kenney-Silver. “We don’t know how everyone else is going to react, and we don’t know how Anne’s going to react when it settles in. But in that moment it’s just quite shocking, in a fabulous way.”
Carell praises Fey and the writing staff for their interesting and counterintuitive choices in the storytelling. “You watch a show and you kind of know where it’s going to go, but here we have character choices that are very realistic and organic but surprising,” he said. “I think they try to stay away from the clichés of a lot of these relationships and characters.”
Kerri Kenney as Anne in ‘The Four Seasons’
PHOTO BY JON PACK
Henningsen thinks it made sense that Anne was the one share it, because it’s also Anne’s way of saying she’s OK with it. “If Anne hadn’t passed along the news herself, we would’ve been in a place of like, ‘Oh my God, are the friends going to be pissed off, mad, confused, whatever towards Ginny?’ And because Anne says it, it feels like this little olive branch of not only did she tell me, but now I’m going to tell you because I’ve digested the information and now you too must do the same.”
The end of the original film also ends with Ginny pregnant (and married to Nick!), but Nick’s death adds a whole new texture to the reveal in the series. “We thought there was something really nice about realizing how important Ginny and Nick’s relationship actually was,” said Fisher. “That she wasn’t a blip. That she wasn’t just this young thing that he didn’t care about, and that they had this really important love and connection.” The reveal also helps “Anne realize that her connection with Nick had been fraying for years. Having Ginny become pregnant showed the seriousness of this relationship and also gave us something exciting to throw forward to.”
Fey says the twist could inform the future in all kinds of ways. “Does Ginny remain close to the friend group because of that ongoing connection of having a child? We would see. But I think it is an interesting character development for Ginny, that she would choose to carry on with parenthood [on] her own at the end of this.”
Henningsen hopes that in the future, Anne would help guide Ginny through being a mother. It’s in her nature as a care-taker. “It all made sense to me that even though there’s been this chaotic thing that’s happened in Nick and Anne’s life that, at the end of the day, Anne would welcome Ginny to the table and be like, ‘Sit with us, eat dinner with the friends, wear my sweater. I want to provide comfort and then also let me help you tell them this thing that is difficult,’” she says.
Tina Fey as Kate and Will Forte as Jack in ‘The Four Seasons’
PHOTO BY JON PACK
Do Kate and Jack work it out at the end of The Four Seasons?
Going into the final stretch of episodes, Kate and Jack are hitting one of their low periods. Even though they’re in couples therapy, they’re like two ships passing in the night trying to give the other what they need. As a nod to the original film, their relationship is akin to Alan Alda and Carol Burnett’s characters — healthy and comedic, with an easy rapport. “Kate is probably a little bit bossy in the dynamic and Jack is probably the heart of the couple, the empath,” says Fey. “They hit a few obstacles along the way as the season goes on, but they’re always trying to work on it. They’re always trying to fix it.”
After Nick’s death, their relationship is literally put on thin ice when Kate falls through a frozen lake in the finale, and she has to finally, fully trust Jack to bring her back to safety. Since the first episode, Kate had been glib about the idea of soulmates, seeing marriage simply as a choice you make every day. But now, she doesn’t see it as just work and dedication. As Jack wraps her up in a blanket like a burrito once they’re back home safe and sound, she tells him that he’s her soulmate, and has been all along. Henningsen also sees Nick’s death as a wake-up call for the couple. “It makes Kate and Jack realize, yes, life and marriage are hard, but we are alive in doing it. Sometimes that is the greatest gift, if we can just acknowledge it,” she said.
Colman Domingo as Danny and Marco Calvani as Claude in ‘The Four Seasons’
PHOTO BY JON PACK
Do Claude and Danny find balance in their relationship at the end of The Four Seasons?
All season long, stay-at-home husband Claude is trying to take care of Danny, who has a heart condition. “He has a lot of time, a lot of love to give. Too much,” said Calvani. Domingo sees that as the core problem for the characters, “because you have a lot of time on your hands, so you put your attention on Danny,” he said. Take their trip to Puerto Rico. Claude revamps their bed the second Danny feels a smidgen uncomfortable after his heart surgery. But Claude is terrified when he sees Danny trying to let off some steam by doing bumps of coke with twentysomethings at a local dance party. It’s a fine line between caring just enough and keeping things exciting in their relationship, which includes scrolling through Grindr together and setting up a (failed) threesome on their autumn group trip.
“There’s a lot of deep love, but they’re also in a place where they’re beginning to deal with the heavier realities and subjects that come with age,” says Domingo. “How does one want to deal with it or evade it? How does a couple work through it together and look at each other’s needs being met? Will they separate or will they come together?” When we reach the “Winter” episodes, Danny and Claude are on solid ground, but differ in their reactions to Nick’s death. The ever-Italian Claude leads towards the spiritual, dreaming of Nick as a butterfly who will always be with them. Danny just wants to grieve in the sad, tragic reality that his friend is gone. They see validity in both their perspectives, and to Danny, Claude is not too much. “You’re the exact right amount,” he tells him. In one of the last scenes of the episode, Danny is moved when he finds an old drawing of Nick and Anne’s daughter’s taped up in the kitchen cupboard. It’s of a butterfly, named “Daddy.”
Kerri Kenney as Anne and Toby Huss as Terry in ‘The Four Seasons’
PHOTO BY JON PACK
What the deal with Anne’s boyfriend Terry in The Four Seasons? (You know, the one Claude thought he hooked up with in Barcelona)
Anne’s guitar-playing beau was not meant for the long-haul, according to Kenney-Silver. “She’s trying, but I don’t think her heart’s ever there,” she says. If you remember, Anne brought him on the ski trip for the “Winter” season of episodes. When he arrived, Claude immediately went on a recon mission to determine if he was the same man he’d had a fling with in Barcelona years ago. (He’s not — he’s missing a birthmark). And once they hear about Nick, Terry serenades them with Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind.” Needless to say, it does not fit the mood.
Although Kenney-Silver never discussed it with the creators, she feels like Anne bringing Terry along was performative. “This is my thought, if her friends think she’s OK and doing great, then there’s always the chance they’ll tell Nick that, which she would love,” says Kenney-Silver. “And that sort of makes her OK, because if in someone else’s eyes you’re OK, then you’re OK, right? Obviously, that’s not true.” But at the very least, Anne is definitely doing better than she was a month prior. “She wasn’t actively bleeding anymore, but one false move, and it would tear open.”
Erica Henningsen as Ginny, Will Forte as Jack, Tina Fey as Kate, Colman Domingo as Danny, Marco Calvani as Claude, and Kerri Kenney as Anne in ‘The Four Seasons’
PHOTO BY JON PACK
Does the friendship group weather The Four Seasons?
Yes! Everyone ends the season with the dinner around the table at Anne’s home, basking in how grateful they are to have each other after such a grave loss. With Ginny sitting in Nick’s chair from the very first episode and wearing Anne’s sweater, Danny even suggests they all go on a vacation in Nick’s honor next year.
“It’s so easy, when you have known someone for so long — whether that’s your spouse or your best friend — to take that relationship for granted and say, ‘Well, it’s there. It’s always there, and there’s nothing new and exciting about it,’” says Wigfield. “What we hoped for the show was to drive home this little perspective shift that if you just looked at your husband or your best friend in a certain light, it’s like, “Oh, this is the most precious thing in my life.’ And something that you should be grasping onto with both hands.”
Adds Fisher, “In addition to having a spouse whom you love, and who knows you, and who’s really part of your family, you also need this group of old friends who can also tell the story of your life and where you’ve been,” says Fisher.
The Four Seasons is streaming now, only on Netflix.