Benedict Cumberbatch on Vincent’s future

SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers from the limited series “Eric,” now streaming on Netflix.

Abi Morgan wants the sting of her new Netflix series “Eric” to stick with audiences long after it’s over.

Sure, there’s plenty to be happy about in the final moments. Edgar (Ivan Morris Howe) returns to his parents. Vincent (Benedict Cumberbatch) seeks rehabilitation help for his addiction and behavioral problems in an effort to be a better father and person. Cassie (Gaby Hoffmann) leaves Vincent to prioritize herself, Edgar and a new baby on the way. Detective Ledroit (McKinley Belcher III) gets some semblance of justice in the tragic murder of Marlon Rochelle.

But as Morgan tells Varietythe joy of one child coming home reminds us that so many others, like Marlon, never do.

“I didn’t want the audience to say this was a happy ending,” says the show’s creator and writer. “That was an uncomfortable ending. There is relief, because everyone wants a child to find his way home to his parents. But for me, there’s also pain at the end of the show, and it’s a very intentional pain that we should all feel. It is palpable and important that it is present. If not, then this is just another TV show that uses the trope of a disappearing child as entertainment. I want it to be more than that.”

Over the course of six episodes, Vincent loses everything, as the fear of his culpability in his son’s disappearance exacerbates his already fragile state of being. Vincent is the egotistical puppet master and creator of the “Sesame Street”-esque children’s show “Good Morning Sunshine” and sinks into the depths of his drug addiction and mental illness until he believes the only way to bring his son home is to bring his son back to life to wake up. hand-drawn creation –– a furry, gentle giant named Eric. In doing so, Vincent’s mind also manifests a much more unyielding version of Eric, serving as his walking subconscious.

What Vincent doesn’t know, of course, is that his inconsistency at home was the reason his son ran away in the first place and ended up in a manhole, where he was held captive by members of the homeless community living in the abandoned subway. tunnels under New York City. In the finale, Vincent has used his artistically gifted son’s own map of the city to track him to the same underground community that Edgar had been watching from afar.

But as the city council begins ruthlessly clearing the tunnels of the homeless, Edgar is nearly sold to a human trafficker, while his father succumbs to the temptation of drugs just steps away from his son. Only after Vincent has driven the bad habits out of himself through his imaginary Eric can he call on his son through the character on the news and encourage him to come back home, which he does.

After a stint in rehab –– and belatedly cutting ties with his own estranged father –– Vincent is able to reclaim his job on “Good Morning Sunshine,” where he now plays Eric’s favorite character every day.

“He’s still in a very vulnerable state, and a very fragile state, which to me indicates profound change,” Cumberbatch says of where Vincent ends up. “He went through this dark night of the soul to achieve some amount of comfort, if you will. I think it’s a start. It is the beginning of hope.”

In the final scene, Cassie and Edgar are present at a taping of the show, where Vincent is excited and nervous to see how far he has come. Cassie has had her own revelations during the investigation.

“I think she finds peace,” says Hoffmann. “On a deep level, she knew from the beginning that her fear was keeping Edgar in a situation that wasn’t best for him. Not to mention herself and Vincent, for whom she has a lot of love. But I think in facing not just that fear, but the bigger and far more disturbing fear of her son going missing, she discovers that she is able to provide for Edgar and more than anything she needs.

After the taping, Edgar dons the Eric suit and mimics his husky-yet-cuddly voice to reconnect with his father, a bridge that even Vincent is still afraid to cross.

“It’s a really beautiful scene,” says Cumberbatch. “He worries about where he is with the love he has for his child, where his behavior has left his child and whether there is anything left to save. He has come to a place where he is truly present for his child and witnesses to him. It is deeply moving for him to see the connection Edgar has with Eric, the voice he uses to approach him as this creation. It is the medium that begins to bring them back together in this relationship. It is caring, committed and loving.”

While Vincent’s story has a hopeful ending, there’s no denying that not everyone who alienated everyone in their lives with their behavior would be so lucky. Morgan says she made careful considerations in the finale to recognize Vincent’s quick recovery (described as “a few weeks”) and the chance to reclaim his life and job, not to mention the chance to save Edgar proving that he has changed is one of his chances. privileges as a white man with access to money.

“I think if this was a drama without the secondary storyline with Marlon, I would be very uncomfortable with that ending,” says Morgan. “But it is a very deliberate decision to show the capabilities that Vincent has because of his privilege and his profession and his intellect and his education and his family support, and because he is a white man with status. There are the means by which he can rehabilitate himself and find some form of redemption.”

One of the ways Morgan chose to acknowledge these privileges can be seen in the long-awaited reunion between Edgar and his parents, which extends to the lobby of the NYPD station where Cecile (Adepero Oduye), Marlon’s mother, is still always sits every day. day to remind detectives that her son never came home.

“That’s a very powerful conscious thing there,” says Morgan. “We have worked a lot on that cut. You left Cassie when she was about to cross the road and be with Edgar, and we prevented them from actually reuniting.

She adds, “I guess I’m trying to show that in an unfair world, there’s a reason why some kids don’t come home. And we have a moral, social and cultural responsibility to hold ourselves accountable for that.”

It is Ledroit who takes on that responsibility in the series, as he is single-minded in his quest to find out what happened to Marlon. Ultimately, he discovers video evidence that the 14-year-old was murdered by members of the NYPD after it was revealed that he had committed a sex act outside the Lux nightclub with current mayoral candidate Costello (Jeff Hephner).

Ledroit does not bow to pressure from within the department to move forward with Marlon’s case, and openly defies his superiors by calling for the arrest of the officers involved in his death. Ledriot’s story is not without its struggles, however, as he silently mourns the death of his partner Michael from AIDS and struggles with the way he identifies with the things that targeted Marlon.

But neither Belcher nor Morgan wanted Ledroit to apologize for who he is.

“I didn’t need to portray a man who closes down or becomes smaller over the course of the show,” Belcher says. “I got to portray someone dealing with the real things that a man doing his job, who is black and queer, would have managed. But I get to navigate a space where he flourishes. He’s marching toward what it’s like to accept himself, to love himself, and to kind of reach his full potential and step into what it’s like to be the change he wants to see in the world.

Ultimately, what Hoffmann believes is the message of the series is changing the world. Not in the macro sense, but rather in your own corner of a broken world.

“It’s easy to point the finger at Vincent and his mental illness, but it’s actually a bigger crisis,” she says. “Vincent himself is the victim of a larger crisis of inappropriate parenting, of not being loved properly. To me, that’s what this show is about. It is about our inability to properly love each other, our children and ourselves in a society that does not care for us and does not love us.”