Believe it or not, NBC's The Irrational is already ending Season 2 in the 2025 TV schedule with the finale on March 25, and the whimsy of Jesse L. Martin and Karen David singing for the recent Little Shop of Horrors-themed episode isn't going to carry over into the last episode of the season. After Alec got the bombshell news that Rose's husband – who he definitely didn't know about – is involved in the next problem needing to be solved, showrunner Arika Lisanne Mittman previewed how high the stakes are for the finale.
The Season 2 finale is called "The Exchange," and as you can see in the episode clip above, Rose's husband will very much have a presence on screen. Per NBC, Alec will be recruited to help with a prisoner exchange, which will be personal for him due to the involvement of a wrongfully imprisoned colleague.
Fans will have to tune in to find out more about the character and why Rose never mentioned him to Alec over the past two seasons, but Queen of the South alum Nick Sagar's character is clearly going to mix things up for the duo with spy history of his own. Regarding the stakes of the finale, Arika Lisanne Mittman told CinemaBlend:
It's super high stakes. We definitely wanted to take these last two episodes to be a contrast in tone. We have this super fun musical episode and then we have this really intense and dangerous sort of espionage-themed episode. But I think they're both fun in very different ways.
Apparently, Jesse L. Martin calling back to his Rent roots like he did for The Flash's musical episode and Karen David channeling her inner Princess Isabella from Galavant for Episode 17 last week was a different kind of high note than what fans will see The Irrational hit in the finale this week, airing live on NBC at 10 p.m. ET and streaming next day with a Peacock subscription. The showrunner went on to spell out just how much of a shocker it was for Alec to learn that Rose had a husband ahead of the finale, saying:
Well, we teased [it]. At the beginning of the season, Rose tells him 'There's a lot of things you don't know about me,' and we kind of planted that there, because we knew all season that Rose had a husband, but Karen didn't know. [laughs] And she called me, and she's like, 'Oh my god!' We knew that Rose had this husband, and we were kind of deciding where we were going to lay this in and put this reveal in, and we were having so much fun with Rose and Alec that we just kept kind of kicking it down the road. Then we were like, 'Okay, it's never going to get better than this musical theater episode, so this is the time that we have to introduce a problem into their relationship.' It'll be really fun to see in the finale how they deal with that new issue entering their relationship.
Rose may have been hiding her husband from Alec throughout Season 2, but Karen David wasn't hiding anything! Hopefully the arrival of this man from Rose's past won't mean the end of her relationship with Alec and therefore lead to her exiting the show, but the sneak peek clip suggests that he may have shown up more because he needs Alec's help than because he wanted a reunion with Rose. And there are more questions than answers about whether anything about their marriage is/was/will be conventional!
Since Mittman had known from the start that Rose's husband would have a part to play, how far ahead has The Irrational team planned? The showrunner shared how they plotted out Season 2 from the start:
We figure out the tent poles, we figure out the big things. We had talked about what Alec's arc was going to be for the season. We talked about Rose's arc, Marisa's arc. We talk about all the characters, what their arcs are going to be for the season, and where we want them to kind of land in the beginning, middle, and end. And then time permitting, we get into what's the case of the week going to be. But we definitely had an idea of the shape of what the season was going to look like in terms of emotionally for the characters.
So, in light of espionage, relationships, a long-awaited payoff, and likely new questions, what about Season 3? At the time of writing, The Irrational has not yet been renewed to return in the 2025-2026 TV season. That doesn't necessarily spell doom and gloom for the show that brought the former Law & Order star back to NBC, as the network has only renewed comedies Happy's Place and St. Denis Medical so far. If shows like Law & Order: SVU and the three of One Chicago are still waiting on news for next season, I'm not surprised that The Irrational hasn't gotten word yet.
Still, with some uncertainty about the future, was the Season 2 finale planned as a series finale just to err on the side of caution, or will seeds be planted for a third round of episodes? I asked Arika Lisanne Mittman that very question, and she teased:
Well, you'll see, but it's definitely planned as a season finale. We approach these things very optimistically. We love the show, and we would love to keep making it. I would love to keep making it, so we were definitely setting up the opportunity for it to come back.
Whether this means a harrowing cliffhanger, some unanswered questions, or something in between remains to be seen, but the wait for fans to see what goes down for Alec and Rose with her husband in the mix is nearly over. Tune in to NBC on Tuesday, March 25 at 10 p.m. ET for the Season 2 finale of The Irrational, following the Season 2 finale of Deal or No Deal Island. You can also revisit earlier episodes of Jesse L. Martin's show via Peacock.
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