It's been a roller coaster of a season for Miranda Cosgrove's Carly in the
iCarly revival: She got dumped, restarted her web show, and was called a bitch by Marcia Brady (okay, it was Christine Taylor's character, Argentina). But the ups and downs aren't over yet. As showrunner Ali Schouten revealed to
Entertainment Weekly, Thursday's
season 1 finale is going to take fans for a ride — and they'd better watch out for a cliffhanger.
In the finale, Carly and the gang will return to Webicon, the internet convention we've seen in the original series. There, they run into a familiar face in Beau (Conor Husting), Carly's fellow content creator who broke up with her in the pilot. In an clip from the episode
here, we see Carly's new beau Wes (Josh Plasse) and her ex-beau Beau compete for her affections while arguing about camp provisions.
Below, Schouten opens up about what fans can expect from the season 1 finale, the future of Creddie (Carly and Freddie's ship name, according to fans),
season 2 plans, the Gibby of it all, and more.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: I'm so excited for the finale! What can fans expect?
ALI SCHOUTEN: We obviously wanted to go really big for the finale, so we tried to hit all the different elements that I think our fans are really responding to. In that last episode ["
iCan Fix it Myself"], a little piece of nostalgia, a little bit of reference to an episode of
iCarly from the original series. We tried to hit some serialized elements, some of the relationships for our characters, some career stuff for our characters. And then we also wanted a big, crazy setting for it. So I'm excited, because I think we hit all of that. There's heart, there's hopefully plenty of humor, as usual. When we shot this, it was the week we started airing, so we could even make little tweaks based on what people were responding to.
What's one instance of that in the finale, where audience reaction had an influence?
I mean, we saw how much people appreciated when we would show love for the original iCarly. The episode is something that's very current, but it's framed in the direction of an original episode.
How do you think people who ship Freddie [Nathan Kress] and Carly will respond to the finale?
I'm excited to see the response, and we're in the [writers'] room now for season 2; let us know what you think, we might be able to listen. But Carly's love life is amping up. There's a character named Wes that she's now in a relationship with, and this next episode is going to test that relationship in more ways than one. What I found so far from my joy scrolling is that the Seddies [fans who shipped Freddie and Jennette McCurdy's Sam in the original iCarly] love Wes and the Creddies hate Wes. I think we're going to get a lot of feedback on this upcoming episode. And I'm sure some people are going to love it, hate it, all of the above. For those who are invested in Carly's love life, this will be a very juicy episode in one way or the other.
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| Nathan Kress and Miranda Cosgrove on the 'iCarly' revival | CREDIT: LISA ROSE/PARAMOUNT+ |
How does the finale lead into season 2, especially as season 1 was very much about the characters starting over and figuring things out?
At the beginning of season 1, Carly gets out of this relationship and finds herself not knowing what to do. She goes back to doing iCarly but has to do it on her own. And season 2, we want to explore more what that means. She's gotten wrapped up in her personal life, and so we're going to answer that in season 2. We do set up — I don't want to give too much away — a bit of a cliffhanger at the end of season 1 that will definitely be resolved at the top of season 2, and in a very iCarly way that has to do with the web show, and maybe not how you might expect. That's what we're thinking right now. We'll see what people think when they watch.
This season the show has tackled pretty current issues, like predatory MLMs and toxic girlboss culture. Are there any subjects you want to tackle in season 2?
One thing that I feel like we didn't get to do as much of as we hoped was, what does it mean to be a woman on the internet? And that goes for famous and non-famous women alike. It might change because we're right at the beginning of the writers' room, but that's the thing that we're hoping to tackle even in episode 1, coming back. Originally, Carly was the first of her kind, she was one of the first content creators — now they're everywhere. This is just an existence people have, and the life that they live. And a lot of people will be able to relate to even being semi-public, even just having their personal social media out there and judged and commented on. And women in particular face a certain set of challenges that Carly would be facing, and that we should and will be looking at.
Miranda has said she would love to have characters like Lewbert [Jeremy Rowley] or T-Bo [Boogie] come back in the future. Can you talk about any characters you'd like to revisit in season 2?
Yeah, those names are at the top of our list too. I love having characters from the original back. It's so fun. We definitely want Mary Scheer back to play Mrs. Benson. Her dynamic with our characters is so much fun, particularly we've been finding a lot of fun with her and Millicent [Jaidyn Triplett], and her and Carly. That sleepover episode was just a blast to shoot. And it was a blast having
Nevel [Reed Alexander], so we are very open to people who want to come back. That's a big part of it too, is gauging the interest and then trying to come up with the most creative way to have them.
I know a ton of fans were really gung-ho on having Gibby [Noah Munck] and Sam back. Is the door open at all for them to appear in season 2, or are they probably not going to be involved at this point?
I don't know, it's always a wait-and-see thing. It would be awesome, and it also is the thing where — especially with [the
iCarly spin-off]
Sam & Cat happening [in 2013-2014] — their story lines were really capped off in nice ways. So I think it's an either-or. We'd love it if they wanted to come back, and we also are happy to have that loop close — whatever's best for this version of the show.
You've had really fun guest stars this season, from Christine Taylor to Josie Totah. Is there anybody else you'd love to have on next season?
Oh my gosh, I'd love to have Josie back. And I think that Jerry wants [an appearance] from his best friend Socko, who we never met. I would love to have Victoria Justice back on in any incarnation that she wants to be in. That'd be really cool. And then of course, if Michelle Obama wants to drop by again, I guess we could try and find a part for her. [Laughs]
iCarly
Victoria Justice and Michelle Obama appeared in the original 'iCarly' series | CREDIT: NICKELODEON (2)
I definitely picked up vibes between Harper [Laci Mosley] and Spencer [Jerry Trainor] — is there anything romantic in the future for them?
When we initially conceived of the character [Harper], yes, that was something we were thinking. Then we just really liked them as friends, but then also they have this undeniable chemistry, but now he's dating her cousin [Lyric Lewis]. It's just very complicated. And one thing that iCarly has always done well is the slow burn, and another thing is the "maybe we're better off as friends," so I could see it going either way. But even if they're just friends that have that amazing chemistry, we're going to keep pairing them together because they're so fun to watch. Jerry and Lacey are just kind of magic.
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| Laci Mosley and Jerry Trainor on the 'iCarly' revival | CREDIT: LISA ROSE/PARAMOUNT+ |
Producer Franchesca Ramsey mentioned Carly's line mentioning "hos" was changed to "You gotta switch it up on a bitch," because of standards and practices. What was anything else you had to cut that was deemed a little too out-there?
We were talking about it the other day, and we think we had to cut something having to do with mushrooms. I don't remember which character was mentioning it or taking them but somebody was like, "No, no, we couldn't do mushrooms the last season." But for the most part, nothing's really been that off-limits. Franchesca pointed out when she was finding out that we weren't allowed to say "hos" but we could say "bitch," which feels absolutely arbitrary. But they always work with us; standards is pretty good with us.
I loved Miranda revisiting her "interesting…" meme in "iFauxpologize." Whose idea was it to reference that?
Oh gosh, it definitely came from the writers' room. But she came in and said, "I want to do something with memes." We couldn't not do it, and then [writer Nasser Samara] came in with this pitch for the episode that really got into what it means to be memed, and he knew we wanted a brother-sister episode, and so we put that together. We knew it would be fun for people, we had no idea. I'm waiting to see people use the Millicent meme. I really think she is so great in that scene when she does her own little "interesting" [meme]. She's a sort of similar character in some ways to [Cosgrove's character] Megan from Drake & Josh, so I'm expecting that one to have its own life.
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| Jaidyn Triplett, Laci Mosley, and Miranda Cosgrove on the 'iCarly' revival | CREDIT: LISA ROSE/PARAMOUNT+ |
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