Warning: The following contains spoilers for the Daisy Jones & the Six finale. Proceed at your own risk!
The music — and the love triangle — came to an end in Daisy Jones & the Six‘s finale. As teased in the series premiere, the final installment of the Prime Video drama centered around the band’s 1979 concert in Chicago, which marked the abrupt conclusion of their tour and their last performance together.
The group started to unravel after Camila accused Billy of having an affair with Daisy, and when he couldn’t deny loving her, it only got worse. With his marriage falling apart — and the realization that something happened between Camila and Eddie, earning the latter a black eye courtesy of his bandmate — Billy started drinking and using drugs again. Meanwhile, Camila confronted Daisy, sending the singer down a spiral of her own. Backstage at the concert, an unstable Billy kissed Daisy and told her that Camila had left him, so they were free to be broken together. But Daisy didn’t want that.
“Love can be peace… And if you’re lucky enough to find somebody who lifts you up, even if you don’t deserve it, that’s where the light is,” Daisy told the concert crowd, before mouthing to a distraught Billy to go. He took off, catching up with Camila at the hotel. While the two had an emotional confrontation on the balcony, the documentary’s filmmaker spoke up that she remembered that fight because — surprise! — she is Billy and Camila’s grown-up daughter, Julia.
Older Billy shared that he went to rehab again and started therapy, eventually winning back Camila and getting to watch Julia grow up. (Daisy, too, entered rehab after that Chicago show and went on to have a successful solo career and became a mother.) Then tragedy struck: Camila got sick and passed away. Looking back, Billy was now certain that Camila was the love of his life. In her documentary interview, Camila echoed the sentiment that she and Billy chose each other and had a wonderful marriage — but life is never simple.
The footage ended with some instructions from Camila, which Julia shared with Billy and Daisy: “So one day, when he’s ready, tell your father to give Daisy Jones a call. And tell Daisy Jones to answer. At the very least, those two still owe me a song.”
Billy took the message to heart, knocking on Daisy’s door, who answered it with a smile.
Below, the show’s producers and stars weigh in on Billy and Daisy’s future, as well as Karen and Graham’s heartbreaking breakup and the challenges of that final concert. Plus, scroll down to grade the series ender!
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The Love Triangle
While the final destination is the same, the stops along the way in Chicago that lead to the band’s split differ from author Taylor Jenkins Reid’s novel, on which the series is based. In the book, a conversation after the concert between Daisy and Camila, who tells the singer that Billy is never going to abandon his family, prompts Daisy to leave the band and enter rehab. Meanwhile, Billy momentarily falls off the wagon until another bar patron reminds him of his family.
The series, however, puts emphasis on “the importance of all of these characters having agency,” executive producer Lauren Neustadter says. “We didn’t want the women to be at odds, that it didn’t need to be that Camila was saying, ‘You have to go,’ but rather that Daisy was saying, ‘I don’t want to be broken. I’m not making that choice.’ What a powerful thing… What an amazing and earned moment for her as the heroine of the story.”
Co-showrunner Will Graham emphasizes, “Everyone has to make a choice. No one’s choice is made for them.”
For her part, Reid was on board with the changes to what goes down in Chicago and the series of events between Daisy, Billy and Camila. “The way that the finale happens and the way that Billy leaves the stage, it’s different than the book… but I found it incredibly, incredibly moving, how it happens, and I just was very taken with it,” Reid raves.
Adds star Riley Keough, who plays Daisy: “I think that both versions are beautiful. I think that Taylor’s version and our show’s version are equally as compelling and beautiful.”
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Daisy and Billy’s Second Chance?
The series leaves its ending somewhat ambiguous with regards to what’s next for Billy and Daisy, but a professional or even personal reunion doesn’t seem out of the question. So could Billy and Daisy really, truly be happy together?
“Oh, I’m never going to answer that in a million years!” Reid says. “I think that they have a very volatile and explosive relationship, and I would be very curious how that plays out if there aren’t things stopping them from being together. I think it’s a really interesting question, but I don’t think it offers any easy answers.”
Adds Graham: “I will say, as a fan of the book, I’ve imagined in both ways. And I think that’s the joy of this is that it’s never going to be easy for these two characters, and you know that they’re never going to be able to leave each other behind.”
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The Finale’s Other Love Story
It wasn’t just the complicated feelings between Daisy, Billy and Camila that broke apart the band. After learning that Karen had an abortion, Graham was upset, but later claimed that it didn’t matter if Karen never wanted a family as long as they had each other. When Karen couldn’t return his “I love you” declaration, it was over for the couple. The next morning, Graham even couldn’t bring himself to get on the tour bus with her. Instead, Graham returned home, fell in love and started a family with someone else. But in a heartbreaking moment, Older Karen said in the documentary that she told Graham what he needed to hear, but she wasn’t being honest.
“I actually loved that sort of twist and reveal in the finale that perhaps her heart was a little bit broken,” EP Lauren Neustadter shares. “She knew that she was doing the right thing. She knew that she was setting him on the right path, and in contrast, he’s saying that she sort of allowed him to have all of the things that he wanted in his life, and she has an awareness of the fact that by making the choice that she did in that moment, she gave him that gift. But also, she robbed herself of something that she might have really wanted, and that maybe he was her one true love.”
“For me, it’s really beautiful and heartbreaking,” Neustadter continues, “and I think Suki [Waterhouse] is so exceptional in so many parts of the series, but that documentary part, every time, it just sort of rips my heart out.”
Karen and Graham’s finale storyline also mirrors Daisy and Billy’s dilemma. “Daisy’s seeing what will happen to Billy if he steps towards her and doesn’t want him to make that choice. And Karen’s also seeing what will happen to Graham if she goes down a certain path,” co-showrunner Wil Graham notes. “So there’s a lot of self-interest, but also compassion and care, in those decisions that comes back to the kind of chosen family core of the show.”
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The Final Concert
Creating that last show at Chicago’s Soldier Field, which was the much-anticipated centerpiece of the final episode, provided “plenty of challenges” for the show’s cast and crew, co-showrunner Scott Neustadter says. “We took over a football field [in New Orleans], and they had to build a stage set as if it was a real concert. It wasn’t there. They built it from scratch, and it was an unbelievably taxing endeavor for all concerned.”
As you might have been able to tell from all the windswept hair during the performance sequences, “the weather was crazy,” Neustadter continues. “And then Sam [Claflin] got COVID that day, so he couldn’t actually film that day. We woke up in the morning all so excited about what we were about to witness, and then we couldn’t do it on that day, and they had to take it down.” But in an impressive feat, the production rebuilt the stage the following week.
And that sold-out audience of screaming fans? Mostly fake. “Because of COVID, we didn’t have huge crowds usually in the same moments as when we were playing,” Sebastian Chacon, who plays drummer Warren Rhodes, says. “It was weird, because a lot of the time, especially for the Chicago scenes, it was just us onstage, and our music director Frankie Pine is just, like, jumping up and down off-camera.”
Daisy Jones & the Six fans, did the band’s big finale live up to the hype? Grade it below, then hit the comments!
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