Superstore bosses discuss the series finale and what would've happened in season 7

Warning: This post contains spoilers about the series finale of Superstore.

The Superstore series finale wrapped up six seasons' worth of story with an hourlong episode that gave Amy (America Ferrera) and Jonah (Ben Feldman) a happily-ever-after, saw Glenn (Mark McKinney) hire Mateo (Nico Santos) and Cheyenne (Nichole Sakura) to work at his hardware store, revealed Elias' (Danny Gura) love of severed feet, and so, so much more.

EW spoke with Superstore showrunners Jonathan Green and Gabe Miller about crafting the goodbye and what would've happened in a seventh season.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: When did you all find out that season 6 was going to be the final season?

GABE MILLER: We found out around Thanksgiving that this would be the last season. We had already shot nine episodes and we were preparing for episode 10, and we had a whole different end of season, a different arc that we were setting up. Then when we found out, we had to think about what would be satisfying endpoints as opposed to a big reveal that brings up questions. So we had to quickly recalibrate and start brainstorming.

JONATHAN GREEN: We actually got the news as we were about to go into a casting session for Jonah's love interest, Hannah [Maria Thayer]. We were finally planning to get him back in the dating world and start this new relationship, and then got the news and for a second we were like, "Are we still even doing this relationship? If we're going to explore whether Amy's coming back, do we even want to?" Ultimately we decided it was still good for Jonah to have some wins along the way and start his life, even if he was deluding himself and thinking he had gotten over Amy, at least it would be an interesting thing to see him in another relationship.

Had you all previously thought about how the show might end?

MILLER: We had for the Jonah and Amy story line; we had always thought that they would end up together. But when America was leaving at the beginning of this season, we had assumed there would be at least an additional season to have distance between when she left to when we would get them back together, so learning that it was all going to be in the same season, based on the way we left it, we had a little emotional distance to travel, or at least some work for Amy to do to earn Jonah's trust back a little. That was a challenge, how to do that believably. One of our first calls when we found out this would be the final season was to America to see if she would be willing and available to come back, and when the story started to take shape we realized it would really help to have her back for two episodes to have time to tell that story. Fortunately, she was willing to do it and was great.

How did you decide on the story of closing Cloud 9?

GREEN: That felt like a real thing that is happening with stores a lot now, unfortunately. It felt true to the reality. We've been talking about the death of retail for six seasons, and so it seemed like especially with the pandemic, that has accelerated a lot of the move to online shopping and stores becoming fulfillment centers. That seems to be happening more and more. So part of it was honoring that reality. We realized that we could do that and still feel good for our people if we were showing that they all landed in places where they were happy and they were gonna be okay.

MILLER: Leading up to that decision, when we thought it was just going to be a season finale, we had already been leading to the store becoming like a hybrid fulfillment center and in-person store. The final shot of the season would've been a wall going up and dividing the store, and we were leading toward taking our co-managers and having Dina [Lauren Ash] in charge of the fulfillment center part of the store and Glenn in charge of the in-person part of the store, and dividing some of our employees and seeing what that's like in season 7. That was already part of our plan, but we just adapted that for the series finale.

You've got a large cast of characters. Whose ending was the hardest to figure out?

GREEN: We didn't end up showing where Garrett [Colton Dunn] ends up work-wise, partly because he's the one leading us through those flash-forwards with his voice-over, so it felt like he was present in that sequence anyways. But then also we decided to focus on his relationship with Dina and seeing the two of them happy together at the barbecue. But this season we had him mention that he had applied to GameStop four times and never got the job and that was sort of his dream job. We had a whole story line of Glenn helping him get the job at GameStop. This was before GameStop was so in the news for stock reasons, but we talked about seeing him in a flash-forward where he had finally gotten his dream job at GameStop and we reveal that he's already on his phone just totally checked out, back to old Garrett even at the job he's always dreamed of doing.

So are you all telling me Elias is a serial killer?

MILLER: We haven't established that he actually killed the people, we just know that he is taking feet. [Laughs]

GREEN: He's definitely someone you want to stay away from, though, is what we revealed.

MILLER: Yeah, I would recommend staying away from him. We had some interesting discussions in the writers' room about that and whether Elias being such a lovable character made it a bummer or actually made it the best choice, and you can see where we landed.

Ultimately, how are you all feeling walking away from the show? Are there any stories you're particularly bummed you didn't get to tell?

GREEN: We have an overall feeling of having tons more that we could've done with these characters. This is such a great ensemble, and there are so many great characters. It definitely didn't feel like we were done telling stories with them.

MILLER: One thing we had talked about doing in season 7 was we were setting up for Dina and Garrett to be together as a couple, really embracing the fact that they were an actual romantic couple and just seeing what that looks like for the two of them. That seemed like a fun setup for some romantic and comedic stories.

GREEN: We still thought there was a lot more to mine from Sandra [Kaliko Kauahi] being a mother, just seeing what she's like as a mom. With every character I think we could name stuff. We had sort of barely started to see their potential. It was a dream experience in so many ways. We feel very lucky to have had six seasons with these characters and this amazing cast.

Related content:

• Here's how Superstore ended
• Superstore bosses talk incorporating COVID-19 into season 6, Amy's delayed exit
• Inside the set: How Superstore created Cloud 9