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[Warning: The following contains spoilers from the Season 3 premiere of A Million Little Things. Read at your own risk!]
The Season 2 finale of A Million Little Things left the Millionaires fan club with their jaws on the floor when Eddie (David Giuntoli) was hit by a car after he exited a bar to head home and come clean with Katherine (Grace Park) about a dark incident in his past. To great relief, the Season 3 premiere picked up right where things left off, with Katherine hearing the accident and then Eddie being tended to by witnesses as a mysterious man in a pickup truck drove away and called 911.
Eddie survived the car accident but woke up paralyzed from the waist down. With less than a 10-percent chance that he will ever walk again, this looks like a daunting challenge not only for the entire Seville family, but for Eddie’s friends as they have to come together to help Eddie navigate this new version of his life.
Of course, Eddie isn’t the only one dealing with a lot in the premiere episode. Rome (Romany Malco) and Gina (Christina Moses) continued to drift apart when a second baby became immediately available to adopt after the previous birth mom they bonded with in Season 2 decided at the last minute to keep her child. Rome was all in on getting the second baby but Gina wasn’t ready, showing that the two are on very different pages about how to deal with their grief.
TV Guide spoke with A Million Little Things creator and executive producer DJ Nash about Eddie’s condition, the mysterious man in the truck, Maggie’s (Allison Miller) not-so-warm welcome to Oxford, and what else we can expect from Season 3.
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Why did this feel like the path you wanted to go down with Eddie?
DJ Nash: I think when we were looking at how to tell this story, there were four possibilities. There was Eddie dies. There was Eddie survives, unscathed. There was, for a half a second, there’s Eddie loses his memory. Then there was Eddie’s paralyzed. This was a long time in the making. David Marshall Grant — who has been a writer on our show from the beginning and I share many things in common — we share one huge thing, which is we’re both the children of parents who are physically challenged. I think, for us to see and have grown up with that true grit, to having our North Star be someone who was dealt a very difficult hand and showed their true grit in the face of adversity is something we’re really excited for us to tell in this next chapter of our show.
Eddie is going to have to overcome a lot because he is not going to be able to be the husband he thought he was going to be, the dad he wants to be, the friend he used to be. He’s going to have to either accept that it’s going to be different and he’s going to have to redefine that, or his inability to redefine that is going to break him. We’re going to watch all of that this season. And we’re going to root for Eddie. I am excited to have seen five episodes and being part of the writing of 10 episodes so far. Just watching Eddie’s journey, and probably equally with that, David Giuntoli’s commitment to telling the story, authentically, it’s really been really impressive.
We see the truck driver at the end of the episode. Is he our new Barbara Morgan?
Nash: No, Barbara Morgan never hurt a soul. Look, I may have. I think it’s fair to assume if we’re doing the stuff, Megan. So you can say you called it, we’d like to get you on the record as who this is. There’s a couple of choices who may have hit Eddie and it is the mystery that we’re following as we start the season. It could have been the drunk guy in the bar. It could have been Alex’s dad. It could have been a player to be named later… We’re following the mystery of who hit Eddie, and I think as much as we’re following the history of who hit Eddie, maybe we’re also going to uncover why they hit him.
Let’s talk about Rome and Regina, who are still in a very delicate spot after losing Eve’s baby. Can you talk about how they seem to be on two separate paths of healing at this moment in time?
Nash: How they handle the hurt and how they each attempt to heal, as you’re saying, is really very different. We saw Rome try to sort of fix the problem, and want to adopt this baby in Lenox. We see Regina acknowledge, “That’s not fair to me. That’s not fair to you. And most of all, it’s not fair to the baby and Lenox.” So I think we’re going to see them very much on different pages as to how to proceed. And the question is, can one of them come to the other one’s page? Or can they meet in the middle? With Rome’s depression, and with Regina being the survivor of child sexual assault, they were both able to lean on each other, but right now, that’s proving really difficult because in some ways, some of the hurt and anger they’re feeling is directed at the other person. So we’re gonna see this challenge and we’re going to see them either become stronger because of it, or we’ll see if it’s irreparable.
I noticed Darcy getting a little jealous when Maggie was mentioned. How is that going to manifest in her new relationship with Gary?
Nash: I have to say that Floriana Lima is such an incredible addition to our family. And I have to say that Chris Geere as Jamie is such an incredible addition to our family. What we’re seeing is anyone who’s Team Maggie and Gary is going to be thrilled with the season because we see them love each other and support each other as much, if not more than, they have in the past. Maybe not as a couple right away, but then we also see — anyone who might be Team Darcy — Gary in this next chapter of his life dating someone who’s a single mom, who has a kid, he’s almost like part of an instant family. He’s kind of getting the family right away that Rome and Regina wanted. There’s some people on Twitter who really wanted it to be Team Darcy and Maggie; I don’t know if everyone’s getting that this season the way that they might want, but we are seeing the two of them have to forge a relationship because they both love a guy who was such a part of everyone else’s life. Maggie made a promise to herself. This was the year of finding Maggie. Gary loves her so much that he went to the airport to support her journey to do that. That’s what we’re going to see. And then because we have these incredible writers, they have a way for Maggie and Gary to immediately be thrown into each other like, overnight, very, very fast. Their love and their supporting each other is tested like never before.
A Million Little Things” width=”2070″ height=”1380″ title=”Grace Park and Floriana Lima, A Million Little Things” data-amp-src=”https://tvguide1.cbsistatic.com/i/r/2020/11/19/5dc1848b-a654-4ab2-9851-10c6592b87c6/watermark/45cd10a6de81222dcc057dcb80808815/201119-amlt-grace-park-floriana-lima.jpg”>Grace Park and Floriana Lima, A Million Little Things
Maggie and Jamie do not get off to the best start. How does that relationship evolve going forward?
Nash: What we’re going to see is two people, sort of an odd couple of people who shouldn’t be in each other’s lives, suddenly be roommates. When you’re someone’s roommate, it’s different than anything else. You’re seeing sides of them. You’re seeing them get ready for a meeting… you’re in their life. You’re submerged in their life. Jamie and Maggie are suddenly almost like therapists in each other’s lives, completely submerged and following things that are happening to them. It will be interesting to see this different kind of relationship that results.
What are you most excited to show fans in Season 3?
Nash: There’s a storyline that we are telling that is not part of anything I’ve said so far. It’s a storyline that comes from a very personal place to one of our writers who joined our staff this year and it is just so beautiful, and heartbreaking, and moving. It is exactly, hopefully, what our show does very well, which is an incredibly emotional event that tests your entire friend group and forces them to come together like never before. I’m hoping that story will do what our stories have hopefully done in the past, which is make a group of people who previously didn’t feel seen, feel seen. And I am pitching the sort of big episode about that to the room as soon as I finish these interviews this morning, and then we’re going to go take it to the network tomorrow. I just couldn’t be more proud of this writers room and how they have looked into the pain that they have endured, and turned that into a cathartic experience for them and the cathartic experience for these characters.
A Million Little Things continues Thursdays at 10/9c on ABC.