SPOILER ALERT: This post contains major spoilers from “Go Home,” the sixth episode of “Sugar,” now streaming on Apple TV+.
If you had “Colin Farrell’s new noir detective series is really a front for an ethereal alien drama” on your 2024 TV predictions, then take a bow, because this week’s episode of Apple TV+’s “Sugar” was all for you.
And yes, you read that right. In the show’s sixth episode, Farrell’s character John Sugar is revealed to be a bluish-purple, humanoid alien masquerading as a classic Hollywood-obsessed private detective tracking down the missing granddaughter of a famous film director (James Cromwell). The twist has been teased and, in some cases, mercilessly mocked online since reviews started dropping last month. But for audiences who have patiently waited to be clued in, the episode finally answers what the hell is going on with the show’s central character, who has experienced everything from hand tremors to full-on sensory breakdowns to a Doctor Doolittle-level ability to persuade animals.
Any good noir story features a detective riddled with character quirks. But viewers have spun their own webs of theories as to why things just didn’t add up with Sugar. Some suggested he was a robot, which was certainly plausible considering how he seems to be malfunctioning in front of our eyes. When he deflects a bullet with his hand in this episode, superhero wasn’t out of the question either. But what really necessitated answers was the number of injuries Sugar sustains in Episode 6, which would have killed the average human –– the best evidence yet that he isn’t one. Coming down from the damage, Sugar injects himself with the crystallized syringe seen earlier in the season, and watches as skin vanishes, revealing his true identity staring back at him in the bathroom mirror.
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But Farrell tells Variety it didn’t always happen this way.
“Well, the twist, in an early incarnation, was in the first episode,” he says. “But then it became apparent to us that, rather than lean into that device or use it as a hook for the audience early on, any attention paid to the show should first be earned by virtue of the human drama that was unfolding. And only then does this other aspect, this sci-fi bent, come into it.”
It remains to be seen how successful that decision has been, considering that chatter about a bizarre twist in early writeups may have influenced interest in the show. But the shuffle in strategy is just one example of the fluidity of the story of “Sugar,” even after filming got underway, something Farrell reiterates several times when talking to Variety. Executive producer Simon Kinberg also acknowledges ongoing revisions –– “It was a living, breathing, evolving show as we were building it,” he says.
The first two episodes were written by show creator Mark Protosevich, while the production was guided by Kinberg and fellow executive producer Audrey Chon. From those scripts, Kinberg says there were two schools of thought regarding the twist, with the delayed option offering more narrative excitement.
“You either do it in Episode 1 or 2, and then for the rest of the series the audience is inside that perspective with him and know what they are watching,” Kinberg says. “But then we started to talk about if we could withhold it so that the mystery of who Sugar is becomes a fundamental part of watching the show — as much as the mystery he is investigating.”
While some will still be trying to wrap their head around the new sci-fi slant to the series, Farrell wasn’t dissuaded by it –– if only for the chance to celebrate Los Angeles.
“It certainly lends a good heft of intrigue to the story as a reader,” says Farrell, who also served as executive producer. “But I wanted to be in Los Angeles. L.A. is just so beautifully drawn here, not just the movie industry, which plays a significant part in this show, but all aspects of life were kind of looked at. And the character was so gentle and not cynical. It just seemed like a really original way to inhabit the noir genre.”
The show sits with the image of Sugar’s true alien form for only a few seconds before cutting to black. But that fleeting glimpse shows a figure that looks relatively human, albeit with a more vibrant skin tone and noticeable markings. Farrell did not have to sit for hours in a makeup trailer to attain this new look. It is all CGI, he says, as they were still unsure what audiences would see when they filmed the scene. “No purple makeup, and I didn’t have to slip into my pointy ears,” he says with a laugh. “We didn’t know what the character was going to look like yet, or how human or inhuman or otherworldly he would be.”
What is revealed in that moment doesn’t explain everything going on either. There is still the matter of what exactly Sugar and the other people working with his handler Ruby (Kirby) are doing here beyond observation. This week’s episode also reveals Ruby betrayed Sugar by tipping off human trafficker Stallings (Eric Lange) that he was coming to chat with him as part of the investigation. And again, there’s also the fact that an alien is now the main character of this show! For now, though, Farrell is far more interested in talking about why this was the right moment for Sugar to drop his guard.
“He was tired, just deeply, deeply fatigued, and I think he just needed to drop the mask for a moment at the end of Episode 6,” he says. “He just needed to return to something familiar, which is his natural state. And I don’t think it is a coincidence that he did it with Melanie in the next room. There is something about her presence that gave him permission, even though she’s sleeping on the other side of the door.”
Former rockstar Melanie (Amy Ryan) has become his partner of sorts in the hunt for her ex-stepdaughter, who happens to be Sugar’s missing subject Olivia (Sydney Chandler). The role occupies the same narrative space as the classic femme fatale in the noir genre, but Ryan says she and Farrell agreed early on Sugar and Melanie would not wade into the tall grass of romance –– even though the original scripts leaned that way. Instead, it is a platonic partnership that Sugar comes to trust by Episode 6.
“This was so much more interesting because when you really build on a friendship –– and a friendship that is genuinely earned –– you get to something like a hand-hold, just a simple hand-hold, and it will break your heart,” Ryan says of their dynamic. “It really is just about taking care of this other person, and that, to me, was so exciting. I don’t know if I’ve seen that before, and I certainly haven’t played it before — where a man and woman in a story can lean on that. It is much more everlasting and interesting than the typical femme fatale version of it.”
Farrell’s reasons for nixing any romantic undertones in the friendship between Sugar and Melanie were rooted in what seems to be part of his otherworldly being’s purpose on Earth –– to interact with the good and the bad of humanity.
“I think Sugar finds the best of human beings in Melanie,” Farrell says. “It’s not like his view of the world is sugar-coated — pardon the expression. He has seen a lot of darkness. His job is returning people who have been trafficked or kidnapped to their loved ones. He knows what we are capable of as human beings. But with Melanie, you get someone who has also seen a lot of stuff, and she’s abused herself and she’s been abused. Yet she has come through it, and she is goodness. She is not pretending to be good. She is not holding herself above anyone else.”
In the last few episodes, Melanie has been attacked by Stallings’ henchman in her home, and now must tend to a Sugar bloodied from his own violent encounter with the group. She should run the other direction, but Ryan says Melanie finds a kinship with Sugar that she can’t quite explain — and one they have built without ever speaking it out loud.
“I think he might be the first person in her life who is similar to her, but the judgment doesn’t come with it, you know?” Ryan says. “She can slowly let her guard down, because he is a surprise to her. He doesn’t take advantage of her, or lie to her. All those things that have made her put up a guard in her life. This opens her up, and I think she prefers to live in that place once she experiences it. That’s why she doesn’t run; she leans in.”
The reveal of Sugar’s true identity is something that will undoubtedly color the rest of the season and any future seasons –– Kinberg confirms it’s envisioned as an ongoing series. But this violent new shade of Sugar’s personality in the fight with Stallings will have an immediate impact on the detective. Not only does he kill several people in that scene, he also had to pull himself back from the temptation of doing even more damage. Farrell says Sugar’s fascination with human beings will also require an internal struggle not to fall under the influence of their intoxicating impulses.
“Sadly for him, any act of violence, whether observed or perpetuated by him, is something that hurts him greatly,” Farrell says. “That was one of the things that was nice about him. It was a lovely counterpoint when I read the character. Characters within the noir genre, they are often soiled by the ugliness that they have lived around. The greed, the violence and the duplicity have become part of their experience, even if they are on the side of good. They are a little bit more hard-boiled, they are jaded by the world and cynical.
“But somehow that cynicism hasn’t kicked in at all for him,” he continues. “His hope and his belief in some kind of fundamental decency of human beings is alive and well. I thought that was really beautiful. But this violence he is a part of in the show, especially this episode, has a great consequence on him.”