Warning: Spoilers for the final season of HBO's Girls ahead.
With every lasting television show, the question always comes up: Did the showrunners know what was going to happen in the final season when they started out? In the case of shows like the interminable Grey's Anatomy, the answer is most certainly no. But when it comes to low-key indie comedies with 10-episode seasons, it's a little more likely that the creators had a plan in mind. HBO's Girls is one such show. Now in its sixth and final season, it's not hard to believe that Lena Dunham and her staff of writers knew what was going to happen pretty early on. In an interview with Vulture earlier this year, the showrunner and star confirmed this.
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"From season 2, I remember saying to Jenni [Konner] and Judd [Apatow], ‘I think Hannah ends up with a baby upstate," Dunham said during a cast panel. If you've been watching, you'll know that Dunham's maladroit heroine is now pregnant and moving into a home upstate to raise her child. (This was revealed in the penultimate episode, which aired Sunday night.) Throughout all the twists and turns of the HBO show, Dunham's been aware of Hannah's final upstate destination. According to the 30-year-old creator and star, her character's final resting place — at least narrative-wise — was inevitable. The show has always orbited around Hannah's solipsism and the subsequent destruction it invites. Upstate, it seems, is the only way to cure her self-absorption.
"[Hannah's] destiny is to find herself through caring for someone else because I almost feel like she needs that in order to move to the next step in her life," Dunham explained. "She needs that urgency."
Not everything was as certain, however. Dunham confessed that details of the pregnancy weren't set in stone. "We debated about how it would happen," she said. "We debated who the father would be, whether he would be involved, etc."
We know these answers now. The father of the soon-to-be baby Horvath is none other than Jean-Louis (Riz Ahmed), the handsome surf instructor with whom Hannah had a fling at the start of season 6. And, as of Sunday night, we know that Dunham's plot has finally unravelled: Hannah is moving upstate with a baby. For a series that's all about entropy in your early 20s, it's a fairly tidy ending. Although, there's still one more episode — anything could happen.