Person of Interest has had a number of intriguing characters who came to the show with all its twisty, sci-fi crime stories. If you were wondering why your favorites didn't show up for the finale, the showrunners have now let us know why at least a couple of characters weren't able to appear during the series swan song.
NOLAN: In Episode 12, there were a number of different characters who'd come and gone on the show, who we would like to see one more time. Michael Kelly (as CIA agent Mark Snow) and Annie Parisse, obviously. They're fantastic....PLAGEMAN: We had written some scenes for them, didn't we? I think we did but we cut them because we just ran out of room.
Showrunners Jonah Nolan and Greg Plageman spoke to TVLine about Person of Interest's Tuesday night finale, and revealed that there were at least two characters that they wanted to fit into that final episode, but simply didn't have time for. And, when you're talking about a show that had dozens of recognizable characters throughout five seasons, it makes sense that there would be some old favorites that the showrunners wanted to include, and that it wouldn't be possible to include them as they tried to wrap up a storyline five years in the making.
Annie Parisse is better known to Person of Interest fans as John Reese's CIA training partner, Kara Stanton. After first meeting him on a mission in Hungary, she shows Reese a photo of him talking to his girlfriend at the airport and tells him that he'll never be able to go back to her now that he's in the CIA, and then gives him his cover name of "Reese." Stanton challenged Reese's expectations of the job at every turn, frequently telling him to man up and get used to the life of a government killer for hire, since he chose the life. The former Marine was officially declared dead in 2010, but later shows up and is recruited by Decima Technologies, the shadowy organization that possesses the Samaritan AI.
Michael Kelly played Reese and Stanton's CIA handler, Mark Snow. Snow wouldn't be the easiest of handlers, either; he set up Stanton and Reese to be killed twice, just in one mission. Snow is on a constant hunt for Reese during most of his time on Person of Interest. He even contacted Detective Carter several times in order to try to get his hands on Reese, and attempts to convince her that Reese is a cold blooded killer that needs to be captured. Snow kills himself and Stanton after surprising her in her car while wearing a bomb vest that she forced him to wear, which detonates.
So, it looks like even though both Mark Snow and Kara Stanton appeared to be super dead by the finale of Person of Interest, the showrunners enjoyed working with the actors and writing their espionage-heavy storylines. It certainly would have been interesting to see that either character was still alive and plotting from the shadows when the show ended. What do you think? Would you have liked to see Snow and Stanton in the finale? Let us know in the comments.
