Major spoilers inside…

This past Thursday marked the season one finale of NBC’s unique drama Awake. Unfortunately for the show’s small but rabid audience the episode also served as the series finale; the cancellation was announced weeks ago. But how about that mind-bending, Inception-like conclusion? After an impressionable pilot and a handful of procedural installments, Awake managed to tell an extremely compelling story that left its viewers wanting more when the grand finale closed one chapter and opened the door to a shiny treasure chest of possible season 2 storylines. Detective Michael Britten (played by the gifted Jason Issacs) figured out that Harper was the one behind his life-altering car accident, and shortly thereafter he created a third (dream?) reality in which his son and wife survived.

So what the hell happened? In multiple interviews, Awake creator Kyle Killen shed some light on what went down in the finale without really spelling everything out for viewers. He confirms that Britten did indeed survive a car accident, and that he coped with the loss of either his son or wife by dreaming up a fake reality in which one of his family members survived and the other died. Which one was real, the “green” reality or the “red” one? That is a question Killen dodged. He admits that the finale tipped the scale toward green being reality since all of the bizarre and absurd action was happening in red. But he had no intention to answer this question in season one; it’s the lynchpin of the show. While the finale made the majority of viewers think green is reality, Killen threw a wrench in this theory by stating this: “I could make a pretty strong argument for red being the reality. Look at the state that Britten is in [there]. He’s lost. The woman who destroyed his family has gotten away with it. He’s in prison and he seems to have no hope of getting out of there. He’s essentially indicted himself with his own behavior. So if ever there were a place where you could reach a low that would cause you to create through a psychic break a world in which you do solve all the problems, and you do get the bad guy, and everything does turn out okay… I would think that would be an argument for the red world actually being real and requiring the green world as a dream to make going on seem possible. We, at least internally, made sure we could argue it both ways because going forward, we didn’t intend to have that mystery sewn up in this episode.”

If NBC renewed Awake for a second season, what could we have expected to see? Killen didn’t dive too deep into this, but he did reveal some ideas floating around in that inventive mind of his. Though Britten seemed to have sacrificed the red reality (in it he said goodbye to his wife) in order to wake up in green and take down Harper, Killen says that in season two red would still exist and Britten would continue to switch back and forth between them just like in this season. The differentiating factor, of course, would be the introduction and further exploration of the “third reality” Britten dreamed up in the final minutes of the finale.

Going on a quick tangent here; more on this third reality in which Britten’s son and wife survived… Killen does not deny that this new space is a dream within a dream for Britten. In the finale, while he was talking to his shrink Dr. Evans, Britten decides that he can make his own rules (and that’s when Evans freezes) and dream within a dream. And here springs up a convincing theory that red is real: In red (in jail), Britten is dreaming of green (in Evans’ office); and in the dream that is green he dreams up a new reality where he is united with his family. A dream within a dream, get it?

The series ends with Britten happy since he has finally figured out a way to be with his son and wife at the same time. While this makes for a satisfying conclusion, it does not mean that Britten is in a better place. In fact, Killen argues that the creation of this new space is the result of further degradation of Britten’s psyche. “For us, while it provided an uplifting and hopeful ending [to the season/series], it probably would have been a sign that he was getting worse. He had reached a place where he seemed to part with Hannah’s world, he seemed to sacrifice that to get the answers [to the conspiracy] that he did. Dr. Evans pointed that out to him, that he’s once again on that precipice of understanding and accepting. Instead, he does what he’s done from the beginning — and that’s where “turtles all the way down” [the episode title] comes from. Infinite regression. “What if I’m still in prison in the red world, and all the crazy stuff that happened after… was a dream? Even if one of these [worlds] is a dream, why can’t I have a dream within a dream?” Once he realized [he could], it’s as if he seemed to dream the thing he wanted more than anything — to be reunited with his wife and son.”

(In a related conversation, Killen kills the coma theory. “I’ve seen some really interesting [theories], and I wouldn’t say that anyone is wrong–except the people who are calling it a Dallas or a Newhart, any variation on “…and then he woke up.” That is absolutely not what we intended. If you watch the last few minutes again, I’m not sure what the argument for that [interpretation] even is. I suppose there’s the überpossibility that he’s in a coma and now having a third dream in the coma, but in no way should it be interpreted as, “He woke up and his family was fine. He’d just been having two nightmares.” That’s fine, but this still leaves me wondering about the choice of words he put in Rex and Hannah’s mouths in the final seconds of the episode. When Britten sees Rex in the kitchen his son greets him: “I was beginning to think you’d never get up.” And Hannah: “Look at this; he lives.”)

Back to the season two discussion… Tara, Britten’s son’s tennis coach, would have resurfaced as a potential love interest for him in green. And eventually, Britten would have been released from prison in red. This was the plan: “What ultimately was needed to really jump-start the alternate relationship [with Tara] was some sort of fracturing in the Hannah-Britten story. That’s exactly what you see us building to at the end of the season. Once he’s imprisoned and he’s considered essentially a mad man and there’s not really a clear way out, we would have used that and Dr. Evans to really try to convince him that that was his imagination and there was a psychological reason that he was holding himself there. That would have opened the door enough for us to begin something with Tara. And then by the time the red world resolved itself and he was extricated from prison, without really meaning to, he would have gotten himself in two different relationships. By the time things were repaired with Hannah, he would have already begun a relationship with Tara because he had been leading himself to believe that Hannah wasn’t real and it was something that he needed to get over. By the time that flipped on him, he would have been a man divided. That was something we were really eager to explore in the second season.”

Of all the craziness that went down in the finale, it’s important to note that if the show were to continue it would still hold onto the theme of psychological regression and keep viewers guessing as to which reality was truly real. Issacs summed up his character’s intriguing situation like this: “One of those worlds is a dream. It’s not a rip in the fabric of time. It’s not string theory. It was nothing more or less extraordinary than a man who had been in a terrible car crash and could not bear to lose either his wife or his son, so he unconsciously constructed a whole universe in his head. It is a man who is teetering under the weight of this psychological denial.”

The best way to describe Killen’s short-lived work is as an inventive mini-series; Awake had a beginning, middle, and a satisfying, jaw-dropping end that leaves much up to the imagination. For a conclusion that was shot months before the show found out the network cancelled it, I’d say it made for a both a fascinating season and series finale. When people ask me if I would recommend this show even though it only survived 13 episodes, I say absolutely because the story is well worth one’s time and investment. Why? In addition to a great cast led by the Emmy-deserving Jason Issacs, impressive cinematography, and a fine score, Awake made great strides in telling a compelling story that constantly kept its audience guessing and most importantly, thinking.

To read more from Killen, see his Entertainment Weekly and TVLine interviews at the provided links.