Freddie Highmore on Bates Motel Finale
If you have not watched the series finale of Bates Motel, please stop reading. There are spoilers in this post!
Fans of Bates Motel bid farewell to the series last night. Norman was finally reunited with Mother, at long last, at the hands of Dylan. Freddie Highmore (who plays Norman Bates) sat down with Entertainment Weekly to talk about the series finale.
“Episode 10 is Norman at his most deluded, it’s a Norman that’s gone by the very end. He knows deep down that there’s nothing else, that it’s either this or nothing, which has a romantic quality to it — that it’s ‘I’m going to be living with my mother, either in life or in death.’ But at the same time, it’s incredibly deluded and insane.”
Freddie goes on to talk about how there was only one way to end things, with Dylan killing Norman. “I think what’s beautiful about the end scene with Dylan is that we realize Norman deep down is aware of the performance of everything that he’s doing,” Highmore says. “When forced to confront the reality in front of him, he is able to see it. So it’s purely this part of him that’s longing for something else, wishing that it could be different. I think the biggest line to me was when he says to Dylan at the end, ‘If you believe hard enough, you can make it that way.’ That seemed to sum both Norman and Norma up to me, [the belief] that purely by sheer force of will and by love and by believing in one another, things can be possible.”
“That’s what the scene’s all about,” Highmore says. “Norman goes into the scene trying to keep hold of this reality, and Dylan puts a crack in it. Norman sees that he’s never going to have what he dreams about, and so it’s basically asking Dylan to kill him and to take him out of this world. And when he ultimately does so, whether it’s his choice or not, Norman ultimately is grateful for it and is happily reunited with his mother. So there is hope. There is a happiness to it. But it felt like that’s how it had to end. It was ultimately this love story between Norman and Norma, and the only real end that it could have was that they’d be reunited and back together again.”
“The other interesting thing, from Dylan’s point of view, is to what extent it was a conscious choice that he made or whether it was something that was purely an act of self-defense and more of a split-second reaction as opposed to something more calculated,” Highmore continues. “I think there’s room for both. It’s such a strong endpoint for Dylan because of that uncertainty behind his final action. And I think he knew what he was doing. He knew this was the way that Norman ultimately, in that weird twisted romanticism, that’s the way that Norman’s going to be happiest — by being reunited with Norma.”
Norman & Mother, together for eternity- just what he always wanted. What a fitting end to an amazing series.
Covering superheroes, anything dark, horror, and more! Lead writer for Fan Fest
