The Shards
The Shards

LOS ANGELES — FX's "The Shards" ended its first season Wednesday without naming the Trawler and without saying who shoved producer Terry Schaffer off a second-floor railing.

The ninth episode, "Stairway to Heaven," written by Juli Weiner and Charles Rogers and directed by Michael Uppendahl, opened on that fall. Wes Bentley's Terry drops in slow motion through the foyer of his Hollywood Hills house during a Halloween party. Igby Rigney's Bret Easton Ellis, the teenage narrator, sets the tone in voice-over: "One of the most intimate ways to kill someone is to push them from a great height."

The hour then rewinds through the party and the week around it. Debbie Schaffer watches a VHS tape that appears to show her father and Bret in a hotel room. Bret confronts Robert Mallory about a night together that Robert treats as if it never happened and floats the idea that Bret invented it. Detectives Donaldson and Fregosi gather the circle — Bret, Robert, Thom, Debbie, Susan, Liz, Ryan and Steven — and say they have information on the murders of Katherine Latchford and Matt Kellner and the kidnapping of Rhonda Fox, and that they believe the culprit is in the room. The Go-Go's "Our Lips Are Sealed" plays. Bret's last line is a promise aimed past the credits: "And that's when things really got crazy."

Executive producer Brad Simpson told TV Insider the staircase beat is in Bret Easton Ellis's novel and that Ryan Murphy added the station scene. "We knew that we were all headed towards the moment that is from the book, which is Terry falling from the staircase and the mystery around who pushed him," Simpson said. "And so Ryan came up with the ending at the police station where first Bret and Robert are called in, and they're there to sort of inform on each other, wanting to hold the other accountable. And then suddenly everybody's there, all the suspects." The group shot, he said, is meant to remind viewers "that there's been multiple murders and multiple pushes, and it could be one person doing all of it or one person doing none of it or multiple people who have multiple motives doing different things."

Simpson and Nina Jacobson told Us Weekly the series was never meant as a one-and-done. "Everyone assumes Ryan Murphy is doing a limited series because that's what he does a lot of," Simpson said. "But it feels like book fans may be looking at it and thinking, 'Oh, my God, they're going to rush the end of the book.' Which we definitely didn't do." The plan, he said, is "for at least two seasons." "We haven't finished the story, so that is the hope. It could go further if we wanted it to. But we haven't made it to the end of the book yet." Murphy has previously said he and Ellis sketched three or four seasons; this finale, according to The Hollywood Reporter, covers about a third of the novel.

Kaia Gerber, who plays Susan, told THR the last scene puts her character on both lists — possible Trawler and possible pusher. "We know it's one of us," she said. The book never names the killer. Gerber said she expects the show will, eventually.

The season that led here is a 1981 Los Angeles prep-school story: Buckley students, a serial killer called the Trawler, a missing classmate, a severed head in a trophy case, a porn secret used as leverage, a tape of Terry coercing Bret over a film deal. Episode 8 left Robert whispering Hamlet in Bret's ear and the bed looking unused. The finale does not resolve whether that night happened. It also does not say who killed Debbie's horse, who attacked Susan, or what became of every Trawler victim named earlier in the run.

Critics split on the non-answer. Vulture called the last scene a setup for Season 2 and quoted Bret's closing line as a broken promise to reveal secrets. The A.V. Club argued the hour piled on mysteries instead of closing any. Those reviews are opinion. The official position from the producers is that the book's first third ends on Terry's fall and that the show stopped there on purpose.

FX and Hulu premiered the series Aug. 5. The finale streamed Sept. 9 at 9 p.m. Eastern. A second season has not been formally ordered. Simpson's interviews treat renewal as the working assumption, not a press release.

What aired is a closed episode and an open case file. Terry is on the floor. Eight people are in a room. Two detectives say the Trawler is among them. The narrator says the crazy part starts next. Until FX orders more episodes, that is the ending Ellis and Murphy chose to put on television.

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