‘Locke & Key’ EP Carlton Cuse Explains Eden’s Big Season 1 Finale Turn

Spoilers for the ending of Locke & Key Season 1 past this point!

At the end of the first season of Netflix’s Locke & Key, the heroic Locke children think they’ve beaten the villainous Dodge. But as viewers know, things are only getting started in the town of Matheson… In fact, there’s not just one villain infected by demons, there are two, in a twist that changes things dramatically from the comic book source material. That second demon? Eden Hawkins (Hallea Jones), the town’s mean girl who is poised to get a whole lot meaner in Season 2.

When we first meet Eden in the Season 1 premiere, “Welcome to Matheson,” she’s already bad-mouthing Kinsey Locke (Emilia Jones) for getting special treatment after her father was brutally murdered. Next up? She hooks up with Tyler Locke (Connor Jessup) at a party. But it isn’t until the next episode when she really bares her claws, refusing to get blood on her clothes when the horror nerds called the Savinis want her to star in their shlock-horror film, The Splattering.

Later in the season, Kinsey gives her far more than her just desserts when she uses the magical music box key to make her dance and flail around the school cafeteria. And things amp up considerably after the living embodiment of Kinsey’s fear attacks Eden, making her realize that things are way weirder in Matheson than she expected.

Ultimately, Eden ends up teaming up with the Savinis and the Lockes to try and throw Dodge (Laysla De Oliveira) through the Black Door — a gateway to the dimension where the demons who took over Dodge’s body come from — and while that happens, unknown to everyone else, Eden gets infected by one of the demons.

Oh, and there’s one more twist tied to that: Dodge isn’t thrown through the Black Door, it’s actually the relatively innocent Ellie Whedon (Sherri Saum), who has been transformed to look like Dodge. And in fact, Dodge is wandering around free in the guise of local kid Gabe (Griffin Gluck). At the end of the season, the two are sitting at a restaurant Dodge frequented in the season’s second episode… And just like Dodge, Eden is consuming a vast amount of food, ready to play havoc with the lives of the Lockes.

“Obviously the big turn, one of the big turns in the finale is that Gabe is Dodge and so Dodge has not been vanquished,” Carlton Cuse, an Executive Producer on Locke & Key told Decider. “This is the thing that’s really fun about making television, [it’s] this living, breathing, organic entity.”

Though like most Netflix shows Locke & Key‘s entire 10 episode long first season was released at the same time, presumably Cuse’s long history of working in broadcast television — he’s responsible for LOST, Bates Motel and many more — allowed a more flexible approach to adapting Locke & Key from Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez’s comics. And that extends to this big change, as not only is Eden an original character for the series, there’s no analogue for what happens to her in the books.

“We had really fallen in love with the Eden character,” Cuse continued. “We loved what Hallea Jones, who plays her, has done with that. And it just seems like it would be really fun to turn — she’s already a mean girl, so to turn her into a demon was just like turning up the volume in a really exciting way.”

Even though Locke & Key has yet to be officially picked up for a second season — Netflix usually doesn’t announce those sorts of decisions until a month after a season drops — Cuse and company were careful to craft moments like this Eden twist to set up the next batch of episodes. And in fact, Cuse told us that, “We’re writing Season 2 even though we haven’t been picked up, with the anticipation and hope that we will get picked up.”

If Locke & Key does continue, expect big things for Eden’s new partnership with Gabe. “Making her the henchman sidekick to the Gabe/Dodge character was just something that was enjoyable, and something thought would be fun. Everybody in the writer’s room embraced it, and so we have some cool ideas. That’s going to be a really fun part of it.”

Watch out, Locke kids… There’s a new power couple coming for you in Season 2.

Stream Locke & Key on Netflix