Peacock’s Ponies introduced a multitude of twists and turns — but how did the show end after the mole was revealed and a character’s death was walked back?
The show, which premiered earlier this month, follows two secretaries in 1977 who are working at the American embassy in Moscow before becoming CIA operatives after their husbands die under mysterious circumstances. Emilia Clarke and Haley Lu Richardson star in the series, which also includes Adrian Lester, Artjom Gilz, Nicholas Podany, Petro Ninovskyi and Vic Michaelis.
In the finale, it is revealed that the CIA had a mole, which led to Chris (Louis Boyer) and Tom’s (John Macmillan) deaths. Twila was initially told that her husband, Tom, was the mole but it was later revealed that it was a mix-up and Chris was to blame.
The other twist? Chris was working for the KGB and is actually alive. Creators Susanna Fogel and David Iserson broke down the ending.
“From some early meetings, when we talked to people, they’re like, ‘One of these husbands is alive, or both of them are.’ We understand that that is like, inherent in the genre,” Iserson told The Wrap. “We know that is something that maybe some people might have predicted. However, what I think is kind of something new to explore in a television show, where we have more room to grow, is like, what do you do with this information?”
Iserson and Fogel teased their plan for a three-to-four season series.
“In success, we hope to do several more seasons of this,” Iserson added. “And we do have a lot planned for where it goes.”
Fogel, meanwhile, joked, “14 or 15. We’d like to get us up to current, so up to 2026.”
In a separate interview, the duo teased possible story lines.
“So, bunch of things. So they feel they have the upper hand on Andrei, but he turns the tables on them; we see this shampoo bottle at the end, and we know that maybe they still do have one more card to play, as Susanna was saying. So he escapes, but it’s still possible that, you know that all is not lost,” Iserson told TVInsider. “They’re being held at gunpoint, and the KGB is stealing these documents from the CIA. So we’re wondering how the KGB is going to use those documents, what they’re going to find out, what they’re going to discover, who is going to be put at risk there, how that affects all of the operations of the Americans in the Soviet Union and abroad.”
Iserson went on to hinted at more possible ideas, adding, “We still have this very wide blackmail operation that Bea has discovered its location. We kind of understand that it is incredibly vast, and you know that the Soviets are able to leverage powerful people all over the world, and what that means going forward. We’ve learned that Dane has some secrets. He’s suffering emotionally. He’s suffering with mental illness and suicidal ideation, and also a lot of that guilt built up, and Chris being dead, but then he finds out that Chris is alive, and [we have to see] how that affects him, and how that makes him vulnerable.”
Iserson concluded: “And is he as all-knowing as we think he is? And what it means that Cheryl has been working for the Soviets now, and we have this moment with her and Ray, where Ray says that he is going to trust her implicitly going forward, but we know that how dangerous that is, that Ray is such a good and noble person, but that his flaw is that he is putting his implicit trust in somebody who we now know is extremely compromised and is willing to do terrible things, and we wonder why, and we wonder why Cheryl was turned, and what her being turned means and could do going forward. And so we have a lot of these things to explore!”
Iserson didn’t rule out exploring the story out of Moscow, adding, “I don’t want to commit to that one way or the other. I think, I think truly this, that Moscow is the home base of the show. And, yeah, there may be more to explore as we widen out, but I think it still is very much a Moscow show.”
Ponies is currently streaming on Peacock.
