‘Deadly Class’ EP Rick Remender Talks The Finale’s Shocking Death

The Deadly Class finale aired tonight, and things turned…well, deadly…for one of the cast. The series — based on the Image Comics series of the same name by Rick Remender and Wes Craig — has seen one or two deaths before, but never in quite the same way as the one that closed out the season one finale. It was an episode where danger lurked around every corner; Marcus (Benjamin Wadsworth) and a group of students from King’s Dominion sought out Chester “F–kface” Wilson (Tom Stevens) in the mansion he had essentially taken hostage following a King’s Dominion party in order to gain intel on Marcus.

Since Remender not only co-created (and wrote) the comics, but also serves as an executive producer and co-showrunner on the TV series, Deadly Class is truer to its comic book source material than just about any comic book show on the air; indeed, during our visit to the set last year, actors and other producers talked reverently about the comics, praising not only Remender and artist Wes Craig, but the colorists (Lee Loughridge and Jordan Boyd) and letterer Rus Wooton. As a follow-up to our earlier interview about tonight’s finale, titled “Sink With California,” we caught up with the writer/producer to talk about the shocking death in the final moments of the episode. Spoilers ahead for tonight’s episode of Deadly Class.

For those not yet in the know (why are you still reading?), the raid on “F–kface Manor” went as well as could be expected: it was not without bloodshed, but by the end of the episode there were no fatalities on the King’s Dominion side. Saya left the battle in a rage after a conflict with Marcus, leaving Billy and Petra inside while Maria and Marcus headed toward the road outside.

They were carrying, of course, the head of Chico (Michel Duval), since that’s really what the whole raid was about: Chester had said that he would send the head to El Alma del Diablo, along with a detailed account of who had killed Chico, if Marcus and company did not assent to his demands.

So when they rounded the corner to see El Alma del Diablo (David Zayas) and his men, things started to get ugly pretty fast. They got uglier still when Lex (Jack Gillett) rounded a corner and was immediately shot in the chest. Then — credits. Lex is a character who got more development on screen than he had in the comics, and ultimately died in much the same way.

“Lex is a character that I loved and wished I had more time to develop [in the comics,]” Remender told ComicBook.com. “The problem with any of these things is attention span in comic books. The fact that there are still human beings willing to go to a comic book shop, and pay $4 for a floppy single issue, and then collect it, and then religiously follow it — we’re very fortunate. Comic books is a wonderful community in that not many people get to do that, and then have an audience go to that much trouble to acquire the stories. However, it’s also something where, because Wes can only draw so much and I can only write so much, we’re putting out an average of 10 issues a year. When you add up the real estate of that and how much story you can get through, you really only get to do the choice, creamiest bits, and you have to be very mercenary in your choices, and so a lot of the time … like the first 12 issues of Deadly Class, I had outlined it, and at one point I think the original outline saw that at 20 issues. Now, I cut away every single not essential element, so that we could get to the meatiest, creamy bits faster, which on a new series that’s untested, unproven, and doesn’t have a built-in audience like Deadly Class was when we started the comic, you really can’t linger and drift too much, because people don’t know the book enough to know that oh, they’ll come around. This’ll pay out. You have to give them pay out.”

“So, taking the first two trade paperbacks, and then unpacking those into nine hours of television was so much fun and so very gratifying,” Remender added, “because all of those aspects got to be fleshed out, primarily Master Lin and Lex, and we got to get a much better look at who Lex is and fall in love with him as a character. Obviously, there’s a lot of reasons that you want to do that.”

Given that, just a few minutes before, Petra and Billy had managed to save Lex’s life from F–kface’s minions, it might seem a bit random and brutal to round a corner and immediatley be cut down.

While it seems likely, there is no official word on a second season for Deadly Class yet.