SUPERSTORE Post-Mortem: Jonathan Green and Gabe Miller on the Jonah-Amy Twist and Season 6

[Spoiler alert: This post contains information about the SUPERSTORE season 5 finale, “California Part 1.”]

SUPERSTORE’s Amy (America Ferrera) is heading to California.

After interviewing for a corporate job at Zephra’s California branch, Amy impressed the interviewers—despite her calling them out on only interviewing Latina candidates.

One of the big problems? What that meant for her relationship with her live-in boyfriend Jonah (Ben Feldman).

The duo argued about her decision, but Jonah ultimately came to her with a proposal of sorts: He’d move to California with her.

Of course, this isn’t where the season was originally supposed to end. An unfilmed finale was set to wrap up the exiting Ferrera’s storyline, but now the conclusion of her time with the show will be held until the eventual season 6 premiere.

So what comes next? Showrunners Jonathan Green and Gabe Miller shared a bit of what’s to come when the show returns…

To go back a little, at what point did you know America would be exiting the show, and how did it change your plans for the back part of the season?
Jonathan Green: We knew that there was a possibility that she’d be leaving about halfway through the season, we found out that there, it could happen. So we started talking about one version of the end of the season where she stayed and another version where she left. And either way, a lot of the early part of the season would have played into it as far as Mya, the district manager, taking notice of Amy and putting in a good word for her corporate and helping her get a profile on the corporate website.

All of that stuff would have stayed the same, but would have led to a season finale where that had a different result for Amy. Once we found out that America was going to be leaving, we were able to shift it to the other version we had talked about, which is how it plays out, or almost, because we ended up not being able to shoot the actual finale. It’s how it will play out at the top of season 6.

It’s obviously very early, but are you planning on shooting the unfilmed episode as-is? Or are you going to go back and shift things because now it will be a season opener vs. a season closer?
Gabe Miller: The content, or the moves of the Amy story, we’re planning on keeping the same. There was another story that involved some bigger crowd scenes that we had already when we were going into production thinking we were going to shoot it [pre-shutdown], we were already talking about ways to limit the crowds to be more responsible with what was going on with the health crisis. And yeah, we’ll have to we’ll just have to see what the state of production is at the time and whether or not we have to take a different approach that doesn’t involve crowds.
Green: For the most part that that episode will be similar, almost exactly the same, in terms of giving Amy a proper send-off, giving America a proper send-off. As well as we thought that episode works as a finale, we realize that it wouldn’t be right for the fans or for America or for anybody to have that be the last time we see her on the show. So we’re definitely planning to give her a proper farewell episode.

Ben mentioned that alternate takes to the Jonah-Amy scenes were filmed. Did you end up using those, or was what was in the finale what was intended?
Miller: Ultimately, we decided that the original version felt stronger and just felt right.
Green: Yeah, we had already conceived of these last two episodes sort of as almost a two-parter. So it worked. We already had an ending that led to sort of a cliffhanger before the finale. And now it just became the cliffhanger before next season.

You came into THE OFFICE at a different era—post-Steve Carell—but were there any lessons you learned from that show about how to sustain losing a lead like this?
Green: We can’t really speak to that so much because we came in season 9, and he had already been gone for a couple years. What I will say, though, as much as Amy was the center of the show and the lead character of our show, I feel like it’s more of an ensemble show than THE OFFICE was, at least at that point. And obviously, they had an incredibly strong ensemble, but [Michael] was more of a story engine, consistently, maybe then Amy always was on our show, even though she was the center of the show. I don’t know that it’s a one to one comparison.

Again, with the caveat it’s early, are you anticipating bringing in new people next season? Or is the plan to lean into the ensemble that’s already in place?
Miller: Definitely at first the latter. We have, like, as Jonathan said, this great strong ensemble and funny characters with established dynamics that we’re excited to continue to find combinations and stories [for and] ways to see them that we haven’t. And, yeah, naturally, we’ve thought a little about whether we’ll have someone new coming in. But we still don’t know. And if/when we did that, we would also be thinking like what, what will bring the best new element to this mix that we already have, and what’s a way to sort of introduce new dynamics or stir the pot a little?
Green: We see it a little bit like something we might have done in season 6 anyway, just because you want to shake up the world a little. Or find new elements for our characters to bump up against. So yeah, we’re not thinking of it. If we end up introducing someone new, we wouldn’t see it as replacing Amy as much.

Looking to the final moments of the season, Jonah offering to go to California with Amy is likely going to be bittersweet, because Jonah, ultimately, won’t be leaving the series. What kind of hope can you give their fans?
Green: I think those final moments of this season show just how much they are a team and they work well together and how much they do love each other. We don’t want to say too much about what happens in the next episode. It’s sometimes…I don’t want to reveal too much, I’m being careful with what I say. But hopefully it will feel satisfying to fans and feel like what ends up happening is what should end up happening.
Miller: We, in figuring out the best way to sort of send off Amy, and with regards to the Amy-Jonah storyline, we definitely talked a lot with both America and Ben about what made most the most sense for their characters—the journey they’ve been on in their relationship as it’s been growing. And that’s a great thing about having them both—and our whole cast at this point in the series run—they know these characters so well that they’re a great resource to have to help us—
Green: Bounce stuff off of.
Miller: —stay true.
Green: They know what their characters would and wouldn’t do, and how they feel about each other, and, yeah, they were very helpful in figuring out what those final episodes should be.

This is a show where a good number of significant others aren’t regulars and only occasionally pop up. Hypothetically, if Jonah and Amy were to maintain their relationship off-screen, what are the challenges and fun of that move?
Green: I think that can sometimes end up being frustrating because you’re hearing about a person and you want to see them more, and it becomes all the more like glaringly obvious that they’re not around anymore and maybe just could end up making you a little bit sad. That would be the challenge of it, I think. But, yeah, obviously, there’s some good benefits of that, too, after earning this relationship for so many seasons.

We’ve seen Amy, especially in season 1 when she fought against putting on a fake accent to sell salsa, struggle with people trying to utilize her ethnicity to get ahead. Was her having to contend with this in her final arc an intentional homage or something you realized belatedly?
Green: Yeah, we realized those similarities to the stuff she had dealt with in season 1. And it did feel like a benefit to us that this is her making the decision to take the job, because she doesn’t have many other opportunities like this. And while it feels like a win that she’s getting to move on to corporate, we like sort of the messiness of that. It’s not all good or it’s questionable how good it will end up being, but she’s still hopeful that she can maybe change things from the inside. And the fact that it looks like a diversity hire or a token hire…obviously, tokenism is not good, but it’s still giving someone an opportunity to be in the room and get diverse voices represented. So there’s something to be said for that and just we liked how complicated that issue continues to be.

One of the things that wasn’t touched on as much in the final stretch of episodes was Mateo’s (Nico Santos) ongoing struggle with ICE. When will that move more to the forefront?
Miller: We definitely still plan [to touch on it]. In what was intended to be our finale, which will be our season 6 premiere, obviously, Amy’s leaving will impact Mateo since she’s kind of created this situation for him at the store where he can safely be employed as her assistant. So that will bring up questions for Mateo. Now he’s in this phase of where we’re getting to see what it’s like awaiting deportation and we’ll continue to look at that and how that impacts his ability to have a normal life.

On another note, the show’s 100th episode will now be the second episode back vs. the premiere. With so many things up in the air, how much do you have planned and how much are you just not able to plan given how many variables there are about when the show can even resume?
Green: Yeah, a little bit of the latter. We’re still waiting to see. We know we want to do something big and you know, celebratory of the show that feels right for a hundredth episode. So I don’t think it’ll just be a normal run of the mill episode of the show. Although we think they’re all big and great. But, yeah, I think we definitely want to do something special for the hundredth episode, but we’re still waiting and seeing exactly what makes sense.

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