Person Of Interest Producer: Season 2 Finale A ‘High Speed Game Of Musical Chairs!’

The Machine may have shut down, but it’s all systems go for the Season 2 finale of “Person of Interest,” kicking off tonight at 9/8c on CBS.

“I think you could describe the finale as like an ultra-high speed game of musical chairs with machine guns and explosions,” “POI” Executive Producer Jonathan Nolan told AccessHollywood.com.

In last week’s episode, the virus Kara (Mr. Reese’s old partner) was responsible for having installed earlier in the season finally took down The Machine (and the show’s opening title sequence), prompting it to engage in a hard reboot. Michael Emerson’s character Harold revealed to (his stalker of sorts) Root, that following that reboot, The Machine would call a pay phone at the New York Public Library. Whoever answered the call would control the machine for 24 hours. And, as viewers saw last week, Root who answered one of two calls that came, is dreaming of setting The Machine free.

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“We’re about to find out a little bit about what that entails, what that could mean,” Nolan explained. “But… in this episode, it’s just a 24 hour ticket to mayhem. But yeah, I think the consequences of an all access pass to an all seeing eye would be significant. Who it is who ultimately controls the machine at the end of the season is another big question.”

There was a big revelation in last week’s episode when fans saw (in a flashback) that Nathan Ingram (Brett Cullen) was the one who seemingly created a back door to see the numbers the government found irrelevant. And, much to a flashback Harold’s shock, Nathan was working to save people.

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According to Nolan and his fellow “POI” Executive Producer Greg Plageman, more of what happened between the two men will be explored in Thursday night’s big episode.

“Part of what we always intended with the show was to create big mysteries and some big solutions. And… not to wait until a series finale somewhere down the line to finally answer some of the questions about these characters. So you’re gonna get some big answers about that relationship in [the] finale,” Nolan said.

“And I think one of the really fun things about the flashbacks between Brett Cullen’s character and Michael’s character is that it gives us some of the opportunities to subvert certain assumptions about [them]. [Nathan] was the one exploring the back door, he was the one who found the library and these were assumptions people had all along [that] Harold Finch was that character,” Plageman added. “So the question, I think, in the viewer’s mind is — how did Harold get to where he is today, in terms of his change in attitude.”

As the preview showed, Jim Caviezel’s Mr. Reese and Sarah Shahi’s Shaw, are also in the mix, trying to save The Machine, and somehow doing it from behind the wheel of a very fast luxury car.

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“A Ferrari 458 Italia,” Nolan said of the yellow-toned wheels. “I was very upset to discover when I turned up on set for the finale, they had already [taken it away], so I was unable to drive it around Manhattan.”

Nolan may not have gotten behind the wheel but Reese and Shaw did and in the episode, they apparently have a little bonding session while speeding through New York City.

“They’re stuck with each other working as allies. We love these relationships in our show where you have these kind of gruff, dark, broken people who are forced to kind of get along with each other, and we love that kind of energy and tension,” Nolan said. “Shaw and Reese have that stage when they are tossed into this. … They’ll get to know each other a little bit better, but they’ll have to do it about 100 miles an hour.”

“Person of Interest” wraps up its Season 2 tonight at 9/8c on CBS.

— Jolie Lash