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Neagley season finale is 'explosive' in more ways than one — but I still can't wrap my head around how the final epic stunt was filmed
Spoilers for Neagley ahead.
It likely won't take you long to reach the ending of Neagley on Prime Video — all eight episodes have been released on the streamer — and when you do, it's nothing short of dramatic.
In a nutshell, the Reacher spinoff is following two story strands simultaneously: the death of a young man that's linked to the Echo Canyon Farm cult, and the reasoning behind why Neagley (Maria Sten) has a lifelong fear of being touched and touching others.
We learn that the cult has a secret facility that is being used to test an illegal drug, called Tranqlara, on human subjects, which is all being funded by a Swedish billionaire known as Rawlings. Neagley and her team try to simultaneously avenge her friend's death in episode 1 and save the innocent followers from the effects of Tranqlara, though they're not overly successful.
What it does lead to, however, is the group blowing up the Echo Canyon Farm facility after the death of leader Lawrence (Damon Herriman), walking in the other direction as if they're in the iconic Reservoir Dogs scene.
It's my favorite moment in the entire series (it looks and feels so effortlessly cool), but according to Sten, none of it was filmed in the way that I thought it would be.
'It wasn't as impressive as what you see'
"I thought it was cool, but I could spoil things and say that there was no such explosion behind us as we walk away," Sten tells me. "There was actually a wind turbine. But we played the music that was going to be played and definitely got in the vibe.
Greyston Holt, who plays detective newcomer Hudson Riley, adds, "We knew what it would be. But in the moment, it certainly didn't look as impressive as what you see on screen."
For the first time in what feels like forever, I've been fooled by CGI. If you were to ask me whether the season finale explosion scene was real or digitally generated, I'd have firmly been in the former camp.
However, that doesn't mean everything we see in Neagley was CGI generated. "In the first episode there's a big truck that blows up, and that was a practical explosion. It's a matter of whether we can blow up the set of not," Sten laughs. "It's not always possible, but we always vouch for it."
If Neagley season 2 does get confirmed (come on, Amazon), I'm hoping for even bigger and better actions sequences. Sure, discovering more about Neagley's backstory has been incredibly satisfying, but clearly, nothing truly beats blowing stuff up.
