‘The Morning Show’ Boss On Why [Spoiler] Made “The Perfect Carrier” For Season 4’s Network Cover-Up “Centerpiece”

SPOILER ALERT: This post contains major spoilers for The Morning Show Season 4 Episode 3.

The return of a key Season 1 player in The Morning Show had long been brewing for showrunner Charlotte Stoudt when she took the reins for the Apple TV+ drama’s third season.

The incorporation of Extinction Revolt — inspired by the real-life group Extinction Rebellion — in Season 4 led to a big reveal in Episode 2 with Mark Duplass’ Chip Black unmasking the slippery informant who first reached out to Bradley (Reese Witherspoon) via encrypted message on the Deadbolt app. After Alex went live on Instagram to document a protest at a climate conference in Episode 2, Bradley also connected the dots of the messager’s identity because the informant warned of UBA’s complicity in a cover-up of a chemical company’s hazardous impact on its surrounding community, and the Extinction Revolt symbol showed up in a video Bradley received. The secret source (@gaiawarrior96) makes her appearance, or return, rather, to the screen in Episode 3.

Bel Powley’s Claire Conway, who first discovered Bradley back in Season 1 when Bradley went viral for her behavior at a protest while covering it, is responsible for the mysterious messages.

“When I came on in Season 3, I actually wanted Claire in that season too. I’d always been thinking about what a fascinating character she was, and it didn’t really work out story-wise in Season 3, and I believe Bel was busy, but we had always had her in the back of our minds,” showrunner Charlotte Stoudt told Deadline. “As we were in the room for Season 4, we were noticing all these protest actions by Extinction Rebellion stopping the Broadway show in the middle, throwing paint onto things, blocking traffic in London. I always felt Claire had a real zeal, a rebellious, revolutionary energy.”

Claire, who financed a lawsuit of the then-UBA network for the death of Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s Hannah in Season 1, is now involved in the climate activist group that made waves outside an oil conference in Episode 2. Bradley and Chip had suspected as much after Chip caught the spelling of Claire’s messages as British and Bradley added that Claire would have “an axe to grind” after not winning Hannah’s family money after her drug overdose that resulted from her revisiting the trauma of being assaulted by Steve Carell’s Mitch Kessler. Chip tracked Claire down after the efforts of the protest that Alex (Jennifer Aniston) documented and covered.

“We thought, ’Well, wow, what if she had joined one of those groups because she hadn’t gotten justice for Hannah?’” Stoudt continued. “’What if she was still trying to burn all the institutions down? What if she came into our lives again in that way?’ So she was the perfect carrier for this cover-up story that we wanted to be the centerpiece of the season.”

Claire acts cagey at first when Bradley and Chip try and speak with her to get more details, and while the pair talk in private, she ultimately runs off, but not without sending Bradley a document titled 2019-liabilities that turns them onto Bethanne Hines, a former Head of News at UBA who got paid a lot of money ($2 million) when the Wolf River story was nixed.

Chip visits Bethanne, who he described as “the most conscientious Head of News” they ever had at the network, in Connecticut, and though she says she signed an NDA about her departure from the network, she subtly types a tip out to Chip to check the Oct. 2018 UBA archives for Wolf River depositions under the guise of asking if she still has his correct phone number. Bradley has another situation to attend to at the end of Episode 3, but there remain more threads to pull in this investigation.

The post ‘The Morning Show’ Boss On Why [Spoiler] Made “The Perfect Carrier” For Season 4’s Network Cover-Up “Centerpiece” appeared first on Deadline.