The SUPERSTORE Team Reveals What Didn’t Make the Series Finale

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the SUPERSTORE series finale.]

Though SUPERSTORE managed to squeeze in a whole lot in its one-hour finale, a number of things ended up not making it into the last episodes. (Beyond of the Jonah/Amy proposal.)

So, what didn’t make it to air? The team shares what could have been…

The deleted cold open.

“The episode originally began with a flashback to the day Jonah stopped into the store six years ago, after having flunked out of business school, ending with him picking up a job application,” SUPERSTORE co-showrunners Gabe Miller and Jonathan Green said via email. “We even revealed that he and Amy had had a conversation, without having seen each other’s faces.”

“Jonah came in, emotionally wrecked and adrift, having just flunked out of business school, and makes the decision to work there for a while until he figures out the rest of his life,” series creator Justin Spitzer added via email. “But we were long so we cut it.”

If Ben Feldman (who played Jonah) has his way, fans will eventually see the sequence, which was removed in post-production. “It was entirely extra, and I—and some other producers—suggested that that would have been a really great thing to release on social or something like that, just as a bonus thing to see,” he says.

But, he also argues it was a good thing it didn’t make the final (aired) cut. “A lot of this finale was about telling the story of where we came from and how we got to where we are now,” he says. “And so, Jonah, who some could argue has lacked certain elements of exposition that other characters have certainly received over the six years, one could argue it was very important to see Jonah walk in for the first time [and] where he was in his life. Because the show begins in the pilot episode, Jonah is already sort of this hopeful, bright-eyed bushy-tailed optimistic [person] and he fits right in.”

“For years, people have been asking me, ‘What is he doing there? What kept him there?'” he continues. “And there was a way to see in the cold open, pre-interview [in the flashback that aired], where he was just sort of as a person mentally coming in. But it wasn’t necessary. Once we shot the rest of the show and we watched everything, you get all that and you understand it, and it’s part of Amy’s speech to him later on. And it ate up a lot of space that I’m really happy [we got back]. As someone who always, always wanted to be on an ensemble show, and not someone who wanted to be the central character on whose shoulders the show lay, I was happy that that was taken out and time was given to the rest of the story and the rest of the characters.”

Garrett (initially) got his dream job.

“At one point, we talked about Garrett trying to line up his next job at GameStop,” Spitzer said. “And we even discussed whether, in the flash forwards, we should show him working there. (You might’ve noticed that he’s the only one of our regular cast whose job we don’t show.)”

And after trying so many times, Garrett would have had an unexpected ally in landing the gig. “We liked the idea—we had a whole storyline, actually—where Glenn helped him get a job at GameStop,” Green told reporters in the video below. “Garrett wasn’t even going to bother applying for the fifth time, because he had never gotten it, but Glenn ended up putting in a good word and really selling them on Garrett. Garrett finally got his dream job at GameStop, and then we liked the idea that in the flash forward, we see Garrett at GameStop, but already totally checked out: he’s on his phone, same old Garrett.”

Spitzer acknowledged he was glad they didn’t go down that road. “For me, that would’ve been missing the point,” he said. “We weren’t trying to say that all these characters end up serendipitously landing their ideal jobs after they leave Cloud 9. We were saying that the vast majority of jobs aren’t fun, so it’s all about trying to enjoy the moments that are. (I’m also glad we didn’t use Game Stop given how much they’ve been in the news since we originally discussed that idea.)”

And the cut farewells for a few fan favorites.

“At various times we had different versions of a big group scene, almost like a final break room scene,” Miller and Green said. “In one version they’d been ordered by Zephra to box up the cleaning robot to return it to corporate, and in an act of rebellion, they ‘set it free’ (reprogramming it so it thought it was heading to the Garden Center but the coordinates were set for Buenos Aires). So we had a big celebratory sendoff scene where they decorated the robot, said a little speech, Mateo sang Katy Perry’s ‘Firework,’ and Dina fired her shotgun in the air as the robot rolled off into the sunset.”

“In one version, Amy awards it a medal of valor,” Spitzer said. “We joked that, in the flash forwards, we would intermittently cut back to Glen travelling the world.”

And while we got to see all of the Cloud 9ers hanging out in the flash forward montage, a few scenes were penned—but not shot—to show how they got there, Miller and Green revealed: “[We had] a final-day staff talent show, an awkward Jerry/Garrett scene about whether they’ll stay ‘best friends,’ and an uneasy final truce between Sandra and Carol.”

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• SUPERSTORE Series Finale Photos
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• SUPERSTORE: America Ferrera to Return for Series Finale
• NBC Teases SUPERSTORE Series Finale
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• The SUPERSTORE Team Previews Cloud 9’s New Management, Drama for Key Duos
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• SUPERSTORE Creator Justin Spitzer Looks Back on Very Big, Out-of-Time ‘Olympics’
• SUPERSTORE Bosses Reveal Cut Season 1 Finale Storyline, HAMILTON Near-Miss, and More
• A Beginner’s Guide to SUPERSTORE
• SUPERSTORE Post-Mortem: Ben Feldman on Embracing the Horror Tone of ‘Carol’s Back’
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