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'Shining Girls' Showrunner Explains Ending Changes From Novel

'Shining Girls' showrunner Silka Luisa discusses changes made to her Apple TV+ adaptation of Lauren Beukes' novel and plans for a potential second season.
by Danielle Turchiano — 
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Elisabeth Moss in 'Shining Girls'

Apple TV+

Warning: This story contains spoilers for the finale of Shining Girls, titled "30" and . Read at your own risk!


From the earliest days during which writer and producer Silka Luisa began adapting Lauren Beukes' 2013 novel titled The Shining Girls, she knew the story had to end with protagonist Kirby flipping the power dynamic. 

After surviving a horrific attack by a time-traveling man named Harper, in the novel, Kirby shoots Harper and sets his house (the source of his abilities) on fire. However, the very end of the story reveals a drunken man finding the house key, and there is a lingering feeling that the story could go on, though Kirby likely wouldn't still be connected to it.

For her Apple TV+ adaptation, more simply titled Shining Girls, Luisa wanted to leave the ending on a similar note of possible continuation, but in a different way. Most notably, Kirby had to be in control.

While Kirby (played by Elisabeth Moss, who also executive produces and directs) still has a potentially fatal encounter with Harper (Jamie Bell) in the finale episode titled "30," she does not stop there; she takes possession of the house, traveling back in time — to warn Harper's first victim not to welcome him back into her life, as well as to lead Harper to the house where she stops him from going down the path that caused her to get attacked in the first place (and so many other women to be killed). In doing so, she gives him the ailment he had previously given her: Every action she will make from here on out will have consequences for him, resetting his world in ways only he notices.

"For me, the house became a totem of power, and the story was really about Kirby reclaiming that power and taking ownership of that power at the end of the season," Luisa tells Metacritic.

Kirby isn't content with feeling the power of Harper experiencing only one such disorienting instance, though. Instead, the final moments of the episode see her (and her dog) sitting alone in the house, guarding it, rather than burning it down.

"I was interested in not having a clean victory where it felt like she she kills Harper, she burns down the house, and now she can just go on. There is a cost to examining the past. Throughout the season, I tried to really depict the exploration of trauma as honestly as I could. And I think by the end of it, you do end up in a space that is a lot more gray. You never get back fully to who you were, you're a new person, and the question is now what are you going to do?" Luisa says.

Here, Luisa breaks down her changes to the ending, all of the action Kirby had to undertake that we didn't see to get to those final moments, and whether she has a plan for a potential second season yet.

There is a very clear moment early on in the finale when Harper comes back to the house and there is a dog in it that sets up he is not as in control as he, or even the audience, has thought he was this whole time. What went into calibrating that scene, in terms of how much you wanted it to tip off exactly what was to come?

It was just supposed to be a little bit of a lead, so that you could see that Kirby was going to be coming to the house soon and that these two forces were going to meet up. I liked that it started Harper in the episode on his back foot a little bit. He's just killed Dan, and he's charging home feeling really good about what he's done, and [he thinks] he's back in the driver's seat. And then this little piece that's new again, it makes him spin out a little bit. That, emotionally, was more interesting to me than just having him plow through the episode.

It's a particularly interesting moment when you consider we've been along for the ride with Kirby the whole time, getting used to the shifting world under her feet, and then the same happens to him for a brief moment. Can you talk about the rules you set regarding what could and could not change? Were there certain elements that were off-limits to change?

I kept it really, really simple. I think of time as one string, so Kirby and Harper are connected on this one string. His actions, wherever he is on the string — whatever time period — ripples forward and like a butterfly effect, impacts her. So you're connected to your perpetrator across time and you need to cut the rope.

The house always changes. The house is outside of time. It exists outside of the string. And so, emotionally, things just get charged up, and they switch all the time. Whoever owned it, the same thing happened. It's almost like it's own weather pattern inside the house.

It had to be connected to the person. It couldn't be the mayor of Chicago. We discussed, "Wouldn't it be completely disorienting if whole neighborhoods became completely different?" But that felt so disconnected from Kirby that that seemed not possible. And so, Dan's car changes because he's become closer to Kirby. That is a huge indication that now he's in her space, and they are emotionally connected because of that, so that means that his his car changing actually has has impact on her.

Speaking of Dan, he became such an important figure for Kirby because having support was so important to her. Why did you want to take that away from her? In the book, he is injured, but he lives.

I wanted to see what she does on her own. Having a partner, having somebody support you and listen to you is a huge boost, so when you have that removed, how can you move through that again? It feels like the final emotional test for her.

When it came to those emotions, how did you walk the line between the idea of her wanting to get justice versus revenge?

That's a tough question. I think even at the end, when she basically puts Harper in this weird [position] where he's having all of these shifts, you can ask the questions, "How does she really feel about that? Should she just have let him go? Should she just have killed him?" That's a psychic punishment. To me that question is very interesting, but I don't think there is a black and white answer to it, which is what I love. And I what I love about Lizzie's performance is that I don't think she does make it really clear.

She also just had a whirlwind of an experience, first with her world resetting around her so quickly and then with her traveling back in time a bunch so she could reset his. She was getting used to adjusting quickly to changes, but when it happens that fast it seems like you would struggle more to get your feet under you. How did that need to fuel her actions?

Both Lizzie and Daina [Reid], who's the director for the episode, talked about Kirby having a different energy in this episode — that she was a lot more activated, she was laser focused on what was happening to her, and she just moved through things with an anger that we hadn't really seen unleashed. And I think there is a great pleasure in watching her finally just be able to fully put that out in the world.

How much of that also affects why she wants the house?

She doesn't go in knowing, "I'm gonna get a time travel house at the end of this." I think she's really just focused on Harper. But at the same time, if you found a magic waterfall, you might be left with the question of, "OK my life has ended as I knew it, what am I going to do with this?" It would be a lot harder for me to burn it down immediately.

But it comes with such a heavy responsibility.

That is something we talked about with Lizzie, especially in her performance in that final moment, because we had tons of different takes of that. And there were some where she was smiling, there were some where she felt like she'd won the day, and in the end it felt too neat to do that — and too dishonest.

There is still the lingering threat of Harper in the world. He's stuck and suffering, but he's still out there and we know what he's capable of.

If you ask that Harper that comes out of the house, "Do you remember stalking these women for 10 years?" He doesn't have that knowledge, but the thing he does remember is the house. And he is still out in the world and you still know that he is potentially a violent man. I think that's the burden of taking on the house and then letting him live. You have to sit on the nest outside of time. You finally built all of these relationships and now you have to watch him, now you have to guard this thing that's potentially valuable for other people. I think that's a big trade off.

Going back to Kirby time traveling, how many times did she have to go back to get the results we see, and were there versions of the script or even earlier cuts of the episode where we saw some of those moments, such as her warning Klara about Harper?

You have to do that for weeks. It's Groundhog Day. So, each of those concepts must have taken her a month [or] six weeks of planning and plotting and making sure, which is interesting because then when you see her finally at the end in the house, she really has become Harper. She's really put herself through it. It's taking you to a lot darker place because you've had to stalk someone, do things you've never done before.

But it was never [supposed to be seen]. We were talking about what the punishment should be for Harper, and [writer] Katrina Albright suggested this idea of the thing that would be most pleasurable would be for him to live through what he put them through. And once she said that, the scenes became very clear and there was never other iterations of them.

How much did Kirby have to tell Klara, or did you want Klara to have some agency, too, in getting bad vibes about Harper?

I always imagined that there was a scene between two women where it was like, "This is who this person was, you're in danger." They as actors had such great chemistry — they're phenomenal in The Handmaid's Tale and everything — so I was always picturing a scene where were they built on the relationship that they would never have had because that other night never happened.

Apple hasn't confirmed whether a Season 2 is forthcoming, but how much have you already mapped out where the show could go if it comes back?

The first season was always [about] making sure I covered the concept of the book. Even though there have been changes along the way, Lauren's book was really a tentpole template for me. That was the most important, so that's where all of my focus was. I think the season in itself does tell you a complete story. Of course, there's tons of open questions about mythology, and what it what does she do, what what is the next chapter of her life, what is she going to do with this? But there was already so many details to lay out in the first season that that was really my focus.

Have you thought about whether it does have to be what does Kirby do with this, or whether you could go into the past, to an origin story of the house?

Absolutely. One of the pleasures and burdens of time travel is that it can be anything and everything. You can literally undo things, you can redo things, there's so much terrain that is available to you that in some ways, it becomes harder to chart a course because you have so many opportunities.


Get to know Silka Luisa:
Prior to Shining Girls, which has a Metascore of 65, Luisa worked as a writer and producer on The Wilding and Strange Angel (Metascore: 58). She also recently served as a writer and producer on the Halo adaptation for Paramount+ (61).