[Editor’s note: Spoilers for the Season 1 finale of “Diarra from Detroit” below.]
By the time the Season 1 finale of “Diarra from Detroit” draws to a satisfying conclusion, Diarra (and we) have been through a lot. And the episode brings the tangled mystery to such an adroit close (while leaving enough unanswered questions to fuel a second season) that surely its structure was always part of the show’s DNA.
Nah, that’s not how TV works. Luckily, co-showrunner and star Diarra Kilpatrick knows how to pivot.
“We didn’t have the budget to shoot Episode 8 as it was originally written and conceived,” Kilpatrick told IndieWire. “Sometimes creativity comes from limitations.”
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Diarra’s reconciliation with Swa (Morris Chestnut) proves to be short-lived when she finally solves the mystery of why he abruptly asked for an open marriage (to misdirect her away from learning about the vasectomy he’d had years ago!). Burying her feelings once again with the case, Diarra puts the pieces together one final time and enacts a dangerous plan to solve the mystery and save the day.
After a bloody fight that ends with the brutal murder of gang leader Velvet — who was holding Deonte prisoner — the episode climaxes with Diarra and Ambien, aka Chris, aka Deonte, driving away into their future. And as the edit jumps from character to character, we keep returning to them looking giddy, relieved, and then… something else. This is, after all, the first time they’re seeing one another after a single date — and now Deonte is realizing that a woman with whom he went on a single date just solved a decades-old crime to get a second date, and Diarra is realizing that she does not know the man beside her. Or has that even sunk in yet? The beauty of the sequence is that, as with so much of “Diarra from Detroit,” we’re left to draw our own conclusions.
“It’s an ending that Miles [Orion Feldsott, a producer on the show and KIlpatrick’s real-life partner] and I have loved for a long time, which is the ending of ‘The Graduate,’” Kilpatrick said. “They had this big high, and then they sit down in that bus, and they’re like, ‘Oh shit, now what?’ It really drove home the idea that, at some point, [Diarra’s] going to have to sit with herself, you know? She didn’t want to deal with her divorce, she didn’t want to deal with a lot of things. She was putting a lot of her energy into other places and other people. And at some point, she is going to have to sit with herself.”
The “now what” of Diarra and Deonte (and Diarra’s eventual self-reckoning) will hopefully get answered in Season 2 — along with why Deonte’s mother (a mesmerizing Phylicia Rashad) is suddenly looking so suspicious and the identity of the Chief, the mastermind behind Deonte’s kidnapping all those decades before. Although according to Kilpatrick, you don’t need a second season to solve that mystery.
“There was a world where we told you everything,” Kilpatrick said. “Everything. And it just felt like the ending couldn’t handle another ‘Diarra Vision,’ which is what we call it when things come together for her in her mind. So hopefully we’ll get a chance to explain it all to you. But I will say if you watch it again, there are the breadcrumbs there. I think there’s more there than people realize to point it towards who the Chief is.”
Challenge accepted.
All eight episodes of “Diarra from Detroit” are now streaming on BET+.
