‘We Were The Lucky Ones’ Finale Was Hardest to Write: ‘Hope and Despair’

[The following contains spoilers from the finale of We Were The Lucky Ones.]

As the primary minutes of Hulu‘s We Have been The Fortunate Ones‘ finale start, issues appear dire for the Kurc household: Halina (Joey King) is going through interrogation upon being arrested by German police, Mila (Hadas Yaron) is struggling to reconnect along with her daughter (Belle Swarc) after being pressured to cover her in a monastery, and Addy (Logan Lerman) — caught in Brazil — nonetheless can’t know whether or not his whole household is alive or lifeless. Unfold out throughout a number of continents and that includes practically a dozen fundamental characters, showrunner Erica Lipez knew that discovering her ending was a tall order.

“That episode was one of many largest challenges I’ve ever had as a author,” showrunner Erica Lipez tells The Hollywood Reporter. “We have been deep into filming and I used to be writing [the finale], whereas we have been seeing what these actors have been doing. I used to be identical to: I’ve to ship this for everyone.”

The concluding episode of Lipez’s miniseries depicts principally the time that comes instantly after the tip of WWII, as numerous members of the Kurc household — a Polish Jewish household who, over the course of the present, have been strewn internationally in pursuit of survival — search to seek out one another once more.

The episode swings wildly throughout the emotional spectrum, with the opening scene depicting a brutal, blood-laden torture and the conclusion ending with the household reunited for Passover, handing meals to one another from throughout a warmly lit eating desk.

“The truth that all of them survived, and the truth that, over the course of this episode, they discover one another — these are a number of the most joyful issues I’ve ever gotten to write down,” Lipez says. “But in addition embedded inside that’s the very actual ache of surviving one thing like that. It comes at a price.”

Although the tenacity and survival of the Kurcs might at instances appear surreal, We Have been The Fortunate Ones is predicated on the Georgia Hunter novel impressed by her actual household. Lipez says the supply materials helped floor the extremities of the characters’ experiences.

A bonus, she provides, is “having an unimaginable writers room. Writing is a workforce sport,” she says. “I made positive we employed the precise writers.”

The dichotomy of hope and despair that the sequence captures is maybe most prevalent about quarter-hour into into the finale, when the forged of characters, many nonetheless remoted and unable to contact their family members, hear over their radios that the warfare is over. Inside seconds, streets flood with celebration and King’s Halina says reasonably somberly: “We search for all people. Tomorrow I’ll go to the Crimson Cross and double test that each one our names are registered.”

“We’re so used to seeing celebratory moments from when that occurred,” Lipez says of the warfare’s official finish. “We’ve all seen the long-lasting images, we’ve heard the cheers. However for individuals who had misplaced individuals and have been nonetheless lacking individuals, it simply appeared logical that there wouldn’t be that type of celebration for them.”

As an alternative, she says, it was “the beginning of a brand new type of warfare.”

This brute persistence has guided the present from the start. “We talked a lot in our writers room, and with the forged and administrators, about resistance, and all of the types it takes,” says Lipez. A number of the Kurcs contemplate preventing within the conventional navy sense, others forge paperwork to cover their identities, and extra nonetheless search refuge on practice rides to Palestine or boats headed for South America.

“I used to be simply so in awe,” Lipez says, noting the characters’ “each day acts of simply residing, advancing their lives, of discovering methods to attach with individuals, to like their households, to fall in love, to have youngsters, to only advance themselves as people.”

This strategy — depicting the monotony of survival — is each what units We Have been The Luck Ones other than different Holocaust dramas, and likewise what made it so exhausting to get made. “I knew it was a once-in-a-lifetime story,” Lipez says, however provides she was conscious the ensemble storytelling wasn’t “going to be a very interesting proposition to networks.”

In the long run, it took her two years to discover a residence at Hulu, a outcome she thinks was partially affected by the world’s collective experiences throughout the pandemic.

“This was a present a few household separated. You watch them spend years simply preventing to remain alive, to get again across the dinner desk,” she says. “As completely different of an occasion as [the pandemic] was [to the Holocaust] after all, I feel there was one thing about that separation. All of us understood on such a visceral stage, that form of ache for family members. It resonated in a brand new method.”

With the eighth and ultimate episode now out on the earth, Lipez hopes to see the present’s legacy go on to talk for itself.

“I feel we’re all experiencing the ache of the world proper now,” she says. “There’s a variety of ache feeling the timeliness of a undertaking significantly like ours. However I so imagine on this household talking for themselves and the undertaking talking for itself. It’s a extremely human story, and I’m hoping that individuals are connecting to it, and that it doesn’t matter what perspective they’re coming from, that they see the humanity of this household.”

All eight episodes of We Have been The Fortunate Ones can be found on Hulu.