The following post contains spoilers for the “All American” series finale.
“All American” sprinted into the end zone on Monday night, and it brought a whole lot of happy endings with it.
If you’ve been watching The CW’s football drama for a long time, you know it’s not the kind of TV show to end its eight-season run on a bum note for its characters or leave viewers to decipher an ambiguous ending. So although the health of mom-to-be Olivia James and her twins was touch-and-go for a while, and it was unclear if Spencer James would make it in time to watch his children be born, fans needn’t have worried. Not only did Spencer reach Olivia’s side right as she was going into her C-section — the twins, Mary and Corey, were delivered safely — but he also persuaded his prickly general manager to trade him to a Los Angeles-based NFL team so he and his family could put down roots at home.
The rest of the ensemble got similarly fulfilling endings. By way of a six-year time jump after the twins were born, we learned the following:
* Amina got involved in politics and successfully served as her dad’s campaign manager for a councilman seat, bringing him to victory in the Crenshaw districts.
* Instead of football, Khalil decided to pursue medicine after that life-changing day when he helped Olischool now, and we detected some sparks flying between him and Tori when they ran into each other outside the same hospital where Oli
* Coop was sworn in by Laura Baker as a full-fledged lawyer… and Breonna was notably there for the celebration!
* Jordan went on to become South Crenshaw High’s head football coach, and he was named the NFL’s High School Head Coach of the Year. He and Layla, meanwhile, welcomed a little girl named Monica — after Layla’s late mother — and Layla’s shelves at home were packed with music producing awards she had won.
* Spencer reached the Super Bowl (again!) with the Los Angeles Robins, and KJ also made his way to that team. The men played side by side for Spencer’s final game ever, and Spencer retired a three-time Super Bowl champion. In the finale’s very last scene, Spencer and Jordan sat on the South Crenshaw High football field and reflected on the men and fathers they had become, which was thanks in large part to the late Billy Baker. And as the brothers-in-law walked off the field together, we saw Billy himself watching from the sidelines, beaming with pride at the boys he raised.
Below, “All American” showrunner Nkechi Okoro Carroll breaks down all of those poignant character endings and reveals how Taye Diggs’ final cameo as Billy Baker came to be.
Bringing back Billy Baker one last time
TVLINE | Last time we spoke, you said fans should watch out for a “big” moment in the “very, very final scene” of the series finale. Just confirming: Was Billy Baker’s appearance that big moment?
[Laughs] Yes, exactly.
TVLINE | I know you’ve had the ending of this show in mind for a long time. When did you land on that final scene, and how did your vision change over the years, if at all?
I knew I always wanted to end the show with Spencer having made it to the NFL and had a successful career in the NFL, and that him and Liv would be married with kids. I knew that Coop would always end up a lawyer, but we were going to take her on a circuitous path there. And I knew that Jordan would find his legacy in Billy’s, and we’d planted the seeds for a lot of this when we did those time capsule videos back in Season 4. I knew that Layla’s journey would complete with her coming full-circle and having her own daughter and being the mother she always wished she’d had. I knew those things for a while.
Spencer bringing his family back to Los Angeles and transferring to the fictitious Los Angeles football team — that was part of the evolution. When we were originally thinking of these ideas, I didn’t know how many seasons we’d get, I didn’t know how much we’d be able to get Daniel [Ezra] back after he left as a series regular at the end of Season 6. And he’s been so generous with his time. Every time we’ve asked him to come back, it’s been a yes, which is amazing. So, that part of it — the whole “Oh, he wants to bring his family back to LA” part — that was new to the storyline as we were figuring out this final season and what his journey in the NFL looked like, what retirement looked like, what home looked like for him. So, it was little things like that [that changed over time]. … We were so grateful that we got to end the show the way we wanted to. It allowed us to lay out these storylines, and the rope for them, and pay them off the way we wanted to.
The part with Billy Baker coming back at the end — it always felt like the brotherhood that started in football, which was Jordan and Spencer, would be at the heart of the final, final scene. And it just felt wrong to do that without Billy. Taye [Diggs] was part of this show for so long, and Billy Baker’s character continues to be important to all the other characters on the show. It really became a thing of, “How do we represent that on the show?” And literally, it might have been all the way back in Season 5 that I was having a conversation with Daniel about what the final scene would be. I knew it would be on Crenshaw’s football field, and I knew it would be Jordan and Spencer. We always had running jokes about a revelation happening during the final scene on the field, and what that could be, and that evolved over time. But after Billy’s passing, every season, I kept bringing [the end] back to Billy needing to be there in some way. He’s no longer with these boys, but like so many of us that have experienced the loss of a parent, they are always with you. So it became a question of, “How do we show that even through all of this, he was always with his boys?”
That’s how we came up with that final moment, and it all hung on me calling Taye, and being like, “Hey, so I’ve got this idea.” [Laughs] But truly, I think it was the fastest “yes” I’ve received in my career, for any request of anyone, ever. I don’t think I fully finished articulating the thought, and he was like, “I’m in.”
Crafting everyone’s endings as ‘a dream achieved’
TVLINE | Taye’s appearance in that final scene is pretty brief, but it’s pivotal. Did it take a long time to get the shot you were looking for?
Funnily enough, we did shoot it for a while. And I’m not gonna lie, I was being a little bit of a perfectionist about it. I was like, “OK, slow down the walk with the Steadicam! Let’s wrap around him this way and show his shoulder first, and then a slow reveal!” God bless all of them. They were amazing. … We did go through it a few times and talked about the pride that Billy is feeling in that moment of the men that Jordan and Spencer have become. That’s been his crowning achievement. So we talked about what he’d be thinking about [in that scene], and in true Taye form, we shot for a while and then used the first take. [Laughs]
TVLINE | I couldn’t help noticing that neither of the twins’ names was Billy/Billie, and you honored other late characters instead. Did you grapple with those names much?
No, actually. We settled on honoring the legacy of who came before [Spencer and Olivia]. We always knew Grandma Mary was going to be one of the twins’ namesakes, and then we thought about who from Spencer’s legacy the other twin would be named after. So, Grandma Mary knocked Billy out of the running very early. [Laughs] But these twins are bringing together the Baker-James legacy, and we have the Baker legacy in Grandma Mary, so what would the legacy be for Spencer? And that most important person for him was Corey.
TVLINE | Let’s talk about the six-year time jump that happens at the end. Was it especially difficult to craft any character’s ending, or did those come naturally after so many years of working on the show?
For our OG characters, we were really clear on where we were going to leave them. And then for Jordan, it became about having his achievement not just be that he took over the legacy of Crenshaw and became the head coach of South Crenshaw High, but that he was amazing at it. Like, it truly was his calling. And we were like, “Oh, high school coaches do get honored as part of the NFL Honors. Jordan should achieve the thing that even Billy never achieved in that role.” It was finding details like that that would really elevate everyone’s landing to being a dream achieved.
Khalil Edwards, M.D.?
CARROLL | For our new generation cast, it was about giving them that first big step into their new chapter and their dreams. Amina’s ending organically came out of what she’d been through this season, and wasn’t necessarily something that, the minute we introduced the Amina character at 10 years old, that I was thinking of — but she was always a fighter. So I knew her career would end with some version of her fighting. That ultimately became as an activist, as a young woman in politics, as the youngest campaign manager who’s already seeing success. That keeps her anchored to her father and the legacy they’re building in Crenshaw.
I also always knew that football was going to be the thing to get Khalil where he needed to go, but it was never going to be endgame for him. And then it was just a question of what career made sense for him. As we were developing what we wanted to do with Olivia and the birth of the twins, and having Khalil give back to the Bakers, in such an immeasurable way, everything they gave to him — we knew we were going to do that, but then it occurred to me that [helping Olivia with her early labor] is such a life-altering moment for Khalil, and it was absolutely the thing that should pivot what his dream is. That’s how he ended up in medical school.
We’re so proud of him. And you have those moments in your life, right, where it’s a life-changing moment and you’re like, “This is the moment I knew what I was put on this Earth to do.” For me, it was the moment I was introduced to Shakespeare in seventh grade. I knew that arts and writing was what I was put on this Earth to do, and I could only hope and pray and dream that I would be good enough to make a career out of it. But something unlocked in me, and we thought, “What is that moment for each of our characters?” Spencer knew it was football at a very, very early age. And with Khalil, for us to get to witness that moment that changed his life and gave him his purpose — we were so excited to tell that story.
With that, I hand it over to you, “All American” fans! What did you think of the series finale? Grade it in our poll below, then drop a comment with your full reactions!
