Warning! This story contains spoilers for the season finale of I Will Find You.
Netflix‘s I Will Find You ended a season of mystery with an absolute bloodbath at the Payne family estate. By the time the credits rolled on the finale, FBI agent Sarah Greer (Logan Browning) had shot her way through a small army of security guards and gunned down the season’s central villain — right in front of a child. Her own father (and FBI partner) spent the episode sidelined in a hospital bed, and the show’s wealthy matriarch had been murdered by her own son.
The eight-episode series follows David Burroughs (Sam Worthington), a man serving a life sentence for the murder of his young son, who receives evidence suggesting his child may actually be alive. The discovery sends David on the run, working alongside his former sister-in-law, journalist Rachel Mills (Britt Lower), to uncover the truth. I Will Find You is adapted by showrunner Robert Hull from Harlan Coben‘s 2023 novel of the same name, with Coben serving as executive producer.
Gold Derby spoke with supporting stars Chi McBride (Max Williams) and Logan Browning (Sarah Greer), as well as Coben and Hull, about the finale’s body count, its central betrayal, and the choices that shaped how the season’s biggest mystery resolved.
Sarah’s warpath
Across the finale, Sarah Greer — suspended from the FBI and acting on her own — fights her way through the Payne estate’s security detail to reach David Burroughs (Sam Worthington) and his son. Asked about her character’s body count in that final episode, Browning didn’t have an exact number.
“I’ve literally never killed someone as a character,” Browning said. “So the fact that I go from zero to minimum five… is insane. I’ve never worked with guns on set. That was new for me. I’m very fortunate that I was surrounded by people who had that experience. Obviously, Chi is very experienced. Sam as well. Sam can do some really cool things with a gun.”
Despite the unfamiliar terrain, Browning said the arc itself was compelling to play. “At the end of the day, really, it’s a fascinating character study because for someone whose job it is to catch a fugitive, to completely throw all of that out the window, to be now this missing person’s detective is so interesting to play. I enjoyed it.”
Coben, who executive produces the series, said Sarah’s arc was expanded after casting. “Logan’s badass,” he said. “I think you do start writing a little bit for the actor and the character. No character to us was a throwaway. Each character could have been their own story, could have been their own show. And I think that was really the case with Sarah.”
Hayden’s Betrayal — and Why Milo Ventimiglia Was Cast Against Type
The finale’s most shocking turn belongs to Hayden Payne (Milo Ventimiglia), who shoots and kills his own mother, Gertrude (Madeleine Stowe), after she admits she falsified a DNA test years earlier to hide the fact that the boy he kidnapped and raised as “Theo” is biologically David’s son, not his own. Hayden’s belief that he fathered the boy traces back to a fertility clinic switch: Hayden secretly substituted his own sperm during what he believed was Rachel’s procedure, only for the swap to fail and for Cheryl (Erin Richards), not Rachel, to give birth to David’s biological son. Gertrude ran her own DNA test after Hayden took the boy, learned the truth, and chose to bury it rather than expose her son.
Gold Derby asked Coben and Hull directly about that mother-son betrayal and how much they felt free to deviate from the novel’s ending — which doesn’t result in their deaths. “I think that’s why I have Robbie and that team,” Coben said. “They were pitching me ideas in different ways. We wanted to keep the heart and soul of that ending. It’s the same ending in many ways, but what do we do with this character? What do we do with that character — who lives, who dies? It’s a lot of discussion, a lot of pitches back and forth, what might work visually that you wouldn’t necessarily have in the book.”
Coben said the limited series format gave them more room to maneuver than a film adaptation would have. “If it was a two-hour movie, maybe we can’t get away with it, but in eight episodes, yeah, we can explore Max and Sarah a little more. We can do a little bit more with the mother-son relationship… with Madeline and Milo.”
He singled out Stowe’s performance in particular: “To get Madeline Stowe, we were both so stoked. She’s just such a presence. You almost want to sit up straighter when she’s in the room. She lights up every room. She brought a class and beauty to every room, and she was so great as the bad guy character in this.”
As for Ventimiglia, both Coben and Hull pointed to his established public image — largely built on playing beloved, trustworthy characters like Jack Pearson on This Is Us — as the reason he worked as Hayden. “Milo is the nicest guy in real life too, and he always plays the nicest guy,” Coben said. “He’s the sweet dad on This Is Us. He can’t be bad. So I think it was fun for Milo too to play against type.”
Hull said the casting decision paid off because the trust other characters place in Hayden transfers directly to the audience. “When he showed up, what he brings is just this purity — you just trust him immediately, and you can understand why Rachel trusts him, which makes the audience trust him,” Hull said. “And once we have that, we’re gold.”
The Father-Daughter Dynamic That Wasn’t in the Book
One of the season’s bigger swings from the source material is the reveal that Max and Sarah, partners on the FBI’s Fugitive Task Force, are also father and daughter — a relationship that does not exist in Coben’s novel. “It was really just wanting to lean into the themes that Harlan did so well in the novel, which is about parents and children — how do you support your child while also protecting them?” Hull said.
McBride said the line that perhaps best defines his character — “We just catch ’em, we don’t cook ’em” — referring to chasing down David Burroughs whether he’s innocent or not — was actually improvised on set. “That was an ad lib that happened just off the cuff, because it’s really who Max is,” McBride said. “Max is the kind of guy that believes a pessimist is simply an optimist with the facts.” Browning, by contrast, said Sarah’s generational gap with her father is what drives her: “She’s open to finding the truth. And that differs her from her father, because she’s got a moral compass that she’s willing to follow.”
Browning said the scene where Max is shot was one of the more difficult ones to film. “She’s got her job on one hand — continuing to chase David — and on the other hand, she’s got her dad slipping away from her behind her,” Browning said. “Saying ‘dad’ is so — you can’t separate that word from real life, at least for me. Chi was an incredible partner to have on set… When you watch him go down, it’s impossible not to feel like it’s real.”
Killing Hayden in front of a child
The finale’s climax finds Sarah shooting and killing Hayden in the woods, directly in front of the boy he raised as “Theo” — who is, in fact, David’s biological son, Matthew. Asked how Sarah walks away from that moment, Browning said she’s still working through it herself. “I honestly think I’m still processing it. Even as I watch it back, I ask myself, why did they make this choice?” Browning said. “But yeah, doing that in front of young Matthew — I developed a real relationship with [the young actor] who played him.”
“I did my final curtain call — they kind of say ‘Thank you for your work,’ and I didn’t have much to say. For some reason, for the first time, I was a bit choked up and quiet — and he was there and he walked up to me and hugged me. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh,’ I felt like I was here to protect this kid.”
She also pointed to the immediate, practical justification for the choice her character makes in that moment. “Even as Sarah in those moments, my job was to protect him, and having Hayden continue on with this gun — we saw him, he shot his mother. Who’s to say he wouldn’t also have done something else? That’s all I was focused on: protecting that kid.”
Coben, asked about the boy’s future — and if he needs therapy — after everything he’s been through, suggested the character isn’t necessarily done. “If you saw Run Away [Coben’s other current Netflix adaptation], he could be Ash and Dee Dee, the two killers on the run, or whatever else. He may grow up to be one of those characters in another book,” Coben said. “We don’t play fair with that sort of thing, do we, Robbie?” Hull, for his part, acknowledged the character’s trauma plainly: “He’s definitely got some trauma. But I think what’s great about it is, yes, the ending is heartfelt and hopeful, but it’s also bittersweet. There’s not a bow on anything.”
An Ambiguous Ending for David and Rachel
The series closes with David reaching for the hand of Rachel (Britt Lower) — his former sister-in-law, and the aunt of his son, Matthew. Asked directly whether the two are now a couple, and whether that would effectively make Rachel both aunt and stepmother to Matthew, Coben hesitated. “We don’t know. I’m hopeful. I’m an optimist. I’m hoping,” Coben said. “I love the way their hands touch at the end. Robbie and I were sort of saying, we’d love to bring a bunch of people in at the end and say, ‘Okay, in a year from now, where do you think these characters all are?’ And the fact that people seem to care, based on the questions we’re getting, that’s an indication that we did our jobs.”
Hull put it more directly: “I think if you want them to be together, that’s more success than whether they are or not. That means we’ve done our job.”
Hull also addressed the overall tone of the finale, describing it as intentionally unresolved. “I think that’s an interesting place to end a series — making the audience wonder. I wonder where they do go from here, I wonder how they do move forward through this,” Hull said. “What’s beautiful is David says in the end, ‘Not a lot of people would understand what Matthew went through, but I do.’ So you have this kind of perfect father-son [pair] that has to restart again. I think that’s kind of a hopeful message.”
