MAYANS M.C. Team on the Premiere Twists

[Spoiler alert: This post contains spoilers for the MAYANS M.C. series premiere.]

MAYANS M.C.’s EZ (JD Pardo) is entangled in more headaches than he can likely handle.

Most pressing is the Mayans prospect’s double life: EZ was quietly released from prison as a DEA informant. “It seems like he comes out of prison with a simple task—it’s not simple, but it’s one task,” Pardo says of gathering information to take down the Galindo cartel.

“And then it gets even more complicated to find out his brother is involved and it’s something that could hurt the club or really anger the cartel,” he continues. “On top of that, his childhood sweetheart is within the cartel…he’s torn in all different directions. I think he’s just trying to do the right thing and preserve life. He knows how precious it. Having gone to prison and coming out, he knows how precious it is. He’s trying to navigate it as best as possible.”

EZ’s long-estranged sweetheart Emily (Sarah Bolger) isn’t just tied to the cartel—she’s married to Miguel Galindo (Danny Pino), a leader of the Galindo branch. “I think they love each other deeply,” Bolger says of Emily and Miguel, who have a young child together. “They have a bond, they have a partnership. She was head over heels for EZ, and they went through a lot, and she went through a lot, subsequently. I think there was a safety in Miguel: he was older, financially stable. He had an air of danger to him. I think he wasn’t perfect for her, and that’s what made her loosen up and allow herself into that relationship.”

“It ended up growing into a really beautiful partnership,” she continues. “Within all the mayhem, within all the chaos, within all the worlds, I think they do for each other what is needed and what helps them both grow.”

But despite that marital bond, Emily and EZ still have a connection…complicated by the fact that he broke up with her moments before she was about to reveal her pregnancy with his child. (Events that took place eight years before the series kicks off.)

Though it was implied that Emily was going to terminate her pregnancy post-breakup—and there was no immediate sign of a second child in her life—Bolger was also left waiting to discover what really happened in the aftermath of Emily visiting EZ in prison. “We had to wait! We don’t know anything upfront,” she says with a laugh. “It’s like a beautiful surprise [discovering the twists]. I do believe all of us were a little homebodies, because as soon as we got that script, no one wanted to go out for dinner, no one wanted to party. We wanted to go home and do our homework and read our scripts.We used to talk about the show and hypothesize about future episodes like we loved a show, like a show was on air right now. It was a special experience.”

In order to fill in some of the missing time between EZ’s golden years and his eventual MAYANS M.C. start, the series will continue to use flashbacks to fill in the gaps. However, the writers want to use the trope sparingly and only in the terms of his photographic memory. “At one point, we were thinking about giving it to someone else in his family, so we could tell that story [from more angles],” co-creator Elgin James says. “But we decided to stick with EZ and his point of view. Flashbacks, we were worried about them, because they’re also such a lazy device. And Kurt is not someone who will allow laziness. It has to always be organic to the story we’re telling.”

But playing the younger version of EZ was a fun challenge for Pardo: “It helps not only the audience but myself in terms of finding out who he was and who he was in his heart. As a prospect, you’re muted. There’s a lot you can’t do. Life has become serious for him, but you get to see in flashbacks when it wasn’t. When he was a teenager and had the world at his hands.”

MAYANS M.C., Tuesdays, 10/9c, FX

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