Like any good thriller on Netflix, Who is Erin Carter? is twisty from the jump. The show’s name quite literally begs the question. And it layers in one obstacle after the next for Erin (Evin Ahmad) as she tries to cover up… something about her past. Of course, by the end of the show (or even just the first episode) everything has gone to shit. Erin overcomes every obstacle, but often maims herself in the process — either from falling off something, fighting someone, or just being on the wrong end of a weapon.
[Ed. note: Evin Ahmad was able to conduct press for Who is Erin Carter? as she is not a member of SAG-AFTRA, which is currently on strike. The rest of this article, as the headline suggests, contains spoilers for the end of Who is Erin Carter? season 1.]
Ultimately it pays off: Erin fights her way through it, beats the bad guy, keeps her family together, and gets to have some well-deserved R&R where she and husband Jordi (Sean Teale) commit to taking care of their daughter Harper and telling no more lies. Only then at the bar she sees her old handler who’s finally tracked her down, and implies that she could — or even should — come work for him again.
“He just pops up, doesn’t he?” Ahmad laughs. “I think that’s something that’s always going to haunt Erin — because in one way she… wants to. It’s difficult, I think, because if you have Erin’s life and her skills and you’ve seen what she’s seen — I can imagine being a teacher 365 days would be boring one day. And she would love to jump out of a cliff and, I don’t know, shoot someone.”
While Ahmad calls it “quite a tease” for a second season, she says there hasn’t been too much discussion of season 2; the show is billed on Netflix as a limited series, but a gal can dream.
“We did talk about countries we’d like it to be set in — we did talk about Japan, that would’ve been super cool; I would like to go to Japan!” Ahmad jokes, before adding that it would certainly go against some of the work Erin did all season to get her family life back on track. “If she goes that path she might lose Jordi and Harper — unless she becomes an undercover cop again. And they kind of understand her job, and they’re respectful. But I find it very difficult [to see if] Jordi would accept it.”
One element missing from a hypothetical second season would be Lena (Andor’s Denise Gough), who is Harper’s real mom and who sacrifices herself to save Erin in a shootout. Ahmad credits Gough’s “beautiful” performance for giving “flesh and bone” to Lena in a completely different way than the script had it. Ahmad says they also work to bring some ambiguity to the connection between their characters.
“I think the complexity of having both these characters, Erin and Lena, really loving Harper and really wanting her to have a good life brings a very interesting layer. But also we kind of discussed as well: Are they romantically interested in each other?” Ahmad says. “They could be. And so if Lena didn’t (spoiler alert) die, what would have been the outcome?
“In my imagination I always saw them making their own little family with Harper. […] I could definitely feel something romantically between them.”
Season 1 of Who is Erin Carter? is now streaming on Netflix.