Is Nicholas Hoult leaving The Great, and is Peter dead?
Well, we should start off this piece by saying that in a lot of ways, we shouldn’t be shocked by Peter’s death in the new season … mostly because it is, at least to a certain extent, based in history. Of course, there are a lot of comedic elements here with this show, but seeing him plunge down to his dead is a seismic component to the story. It changes Catherine and alters the rest of the story.
Still, for a show like this, it is never all that easy to lose one of your leads — but this just seemed like the right time! Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, executive producer Tony McNamara said the following when asked when he and the team decided that this would be the right time to kill off Peter from the story:
I think we always knew. Nick and I had talked about it roughly around the end of season 1, about when we thought it would happen and when was good. And so I sort of knew then it would be season 3, [but] the thing was when in season 3 [it would happen] — that seemed like the difficult choice. Do you go really early and shock everyone, or do we go late right at the end? So there were all these kind of questions about it, and in the end it sort of became a more story-driven thing… I wanted the marriage to be trying to work, but ultimately, I didn’t want that to go on too long. I still wanted to pull the switch relatively early. And Nick was doing Pugachev at the same time. And [in real life] he was having a baby, as well. So we had the practical thing of he was flying in and out a lot and how to manage his time as well. I think in the writer’s room we just kept coming back to right in the middle felt good; it felt like we got a lot of story up and running. And I knew how I was going to do it last season.
Of course, there could be other challenges and surprises coming for Catherine and some other characters moving forward — where history will once again be some sort of guide. Just remember this — there is a lot more that could be explored in a hypothetical season 4. Whether or not we ultimately get that is, of course, the big question.
Related – Are you going to be getting a season 4 down the road?
What did you think about Peter’s death on The Great season 3?
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(Photo: Hulu.)