‘The Serpent Queen’ Showrunner Breaks Down the Season 1 Finale, Teases Season 2

The Serpent Queen Season 1 ends with Catherine de’ Medici (Samantha Morton) seemingly winning the day. She has successfully installed her young son on the French throne, taken control of the kingdom by winning the regency, and tricked Mary, Queen of Scots (Antonia Clarke) into leaving the court. However, as Rahima (Sennia Nanua) warns in the season’s final moment, “Trust no one.” This suggests that all is not well and that Catherine may still have to watch her back in the years ahead.

After all, The Serpent Queen Season 1 finale is not the end of Catherine de’ Medici’s story. Starz is making The Serpent Queen Season 2 and creator Justin Haythe has a lot of history still to cover. Will Diane de Poitier (Ludivine Sagnier) return to court in The Serpent Queen Season 2 or is Catherine done with her for good? Will the show continue to follow Mary, Queen of Scots’s wild saga in Scotland? And will The Serpent Queen Season 2 introduce a certain famous astrologer named Nostradamus?

Decider recently spoke with The Serpent Queen showrunner Justin Haythe about the Season 1 finale, plans for Season 2, and how much of the show is still Catherine’s story if characters like Mary and Rahima are allowed to seize control of the narration…

DECIDER: I want to talk about the last moments of season 1, so obviously it ends with Catherine putting her younger son on the throne, routing Mary, and it seems that she has won. But has she won and also what should we make of Rahima’s line to the camera “trust no one?”

JUSTIN HAYTHE: Well, it’s interesting. I’m happy to answer that. I’d love to know what you think. I’d just love to know what your reaction was. And I’ll tell you what my theory is. You know, I think significant to the victory is that she buries her child, you know? Her child dies, so how is anything ever a victory? It’s not her fault but his dying raises her to the absolute power. So in a way I think it is a victory. And it’s interesting because she became queen regent through all kinds of backward manipulations and this is my interpretation of why things happen the way they did. And she really did run France. She ran a country and no woman was supposed to. So in that sense it is a victory and she ushered in an era of relative, an attempt at least of relative peace, tolerance, and pluralism. But the question, I think the open question for this show – for this season, for next season – is at what cost, you know? And at a certain point what you have to give up of yourself for victory is no longer worth it. I think in this episode, reflected through Rahima when she actually poses the question, “Was this for power?” and Catherine says, “No, it was for freedom,” and Rahima says, “That I’m with.” And I think arguably she had to do everything she did. The question going forward is where you cross the line from where you have to do and where you do it because you want to. That’s my interpretation.

Yeah.

What about you?

I mean, I think she’s won for the moment. Obviously she’s won the battle, but the war’s still waging and maybe she’s gotten rid of Mary, but she’s aligned of her enemies against her so that’s dangerous. That was my interpretation.

I think you’re absolutely right and the power stays the same. I mean you had the Bourbon brothers and you have the Guise brothers and these were the very male powers that be, even though here there are women running circles around them in certain ways I think. These remain the powers that be. And if you know your French history, you know that the house of Valois was replaced by the house of Bourbon and eventually led us to Marie Antoinette, so you know where it’s going.

The early episodes of the season were very much from Catherine’s POV. She had control of the narrative and Liv Hill gave us some “Fleabag” moments. As we made the transition to Samantha Morton’s character, there was a lot more court politics with the Guise brothers and the Bourbons. Where did that come from? Were you worried about the POV shifting? There’s even episodes where you have Mary narrating or Rahima narrating. Whose story is it by the end of the season? I mean, is it still firmly Catherine’s narrative or is it everyone’s?

I think it’s firmly Catherine’s narrative. I mean, I think that when Mary takes over the narrative that she, even though she’s the one telling us the story, we can see, we can read between the lines. Because when you have a zealot, they’re blind in a way. So there are things going on that they’re not aware are going on because they only see the world in this, you know, very black and white view. So I think we’ve become so familiar with Catherine and the point of view that I tried to develop the first three episodes with you hearing Samantha’s voice and seeing Liv direct the camera was that it’s really the sort of old and young that makes us who we are. Right? The person you are and the person you were. And I think that that stays with it. I mean Catherine continues to address the camera as the stakes increase. There are moments where she doesn’t interrupt the tension of a scene and I think that when Rahima addresses the camera at the end, she has sort of interpreted Catherine’s point of view. I mean, the first lesson Catherine gives her is “I learned to never trust a single soul” and the first time Rahima addresses the camera at the end of the episode she reflects back that lesson so for me it is that she’s learned. She’s now an initiate. But I wanted to keep the point of view shifting in the sense that I wanted – from early on I wanted the audience to feel manipulated by Catherine and by shifting it to Mary, you’re inviting the audience to judge Catherine in a different way. But, of course, I think because the closer you get to Mary, the more you know about Mary, you think “Wow, you know, Catherine is preferable.”

Diane de Poitiers has a big presence in the series and then she kind of disappears after Henry’s death. So I’m curious going forward how big of a presence will she have in season 2? Do you have an idea of that? Will she be back?

Well, yeah, I’m very interested. I love Diane as a character and I’m sort of fascinated… I’ve talked about this before, that while Catherine and Diane were sort of adversaries, they were victims of the same thing in the sense that they were ostensibly excluded from any power over their lives. So whatever you got, you had to get sort of outside of the parameters, you had to get through manipulation. They’re both master manipulators, but very different. Diane was this sort of debutante and one of those women for whom the door always opened because of her physical presentation. Catherine was somebody thrown into an orphanage and so had to learn a different set of skills. But I think they’re both victims of the same thing. I like the idea – in history it wasn’t true, Catherine had this famous saying about revenge and basically, revenge is a dish best served cold but she was about waiting. She waited for years and as soon as Henry died, she took a bunch of jewelry back from Diane and cast her out. I don’t think ever set eyes on her again. But I was interested that Diane in her later life I think, and this is something that the actor pointed out to me, Ludivine Sagnier, that later in life she was instrumental in trying to change the law so that – and I hope I have this right – so that daughters could inherit from their parents and not just sons. So that to me gave me an idea that she was onto herself in a sense, onto how corrupt she had been and that the power that she had got, the way that she had got it, is not real power. So I’m thinking of a way that they could at least for a brief period of time hopefully be working on the same side of the street, but we’ll see if that works.

I’m a big Mary Queen of Scots fan. I grew up loving her and everything that goes down in Scotland. Is she ever going to come back now that she’s off in her own storyline or is there a possibility that we could see what happens in the Scottish courts in season 2?

Well, it’s possible. I mean the story of Mary is so complicated in a way. What she gets up to over in the English court, I don’t know if it could fit and that deserves a whole show. And my take on Mary is I think different than the lot. But she was, you know, vehemently and violently Catholic and probably not the nicest person to be on the wrong side of. But what attracted to me is nobody really knows why Mary went back [to Scotland]. And when she went, Catherine took all her jewels from her. All the jewels that Francis, her son, had given to her, some pearls, took them all back and Mary said, “I’ll never see France again.” And without definitive proof as to why she went back, I felt we’re free to invent, hypothesize, to create an alternative history. But you know, it’s interesting, she went to prison with her Marys, all of her Marys who she really did name Mary. They all stayed in prison with her and they all accompanied her right up to the time she was killed. They didn’t actually go as far as also getting killed but I think Antonia Clark gave an incredible performance of Mary.

You have Ruggeri throughout the series being Catherine’s astrologer, confidante, shaman, what you will. Obviously in history, she was also aligned with Nostradamus, who was a bit of a flashier name. Could we see Nostradamus in a future season?

We could. I mean he’d have to compete with Ruggeri. I mean, Ruggeri is in fact a composite of two brothers: Cosimo and someone else, whom Catherine kept around and they were known for doing some really terrible things. I mean, dead babies, real black magic stuff. Nostradamus was more of a celebrity and apparently Nostradamus had, if I’m reading my history right, had a pretty unhealthy interest in young men and he’s a complicated guy. He didn’t reside in the court for any amount of time, but she had a fascination with him because I believe like her, she believed she could see the future and was very interested in anybody else who could. And so I like the idea of Nostradamus crossing her path and then the question would be, you know, who’s the real deal?

How many seasons do you see this potentially going? Because there’s obviously a lot of history we go way beyond season 2, do you have a plan or an endpoint in mind?

Not specifically, but I would say there’s certain holes of Catherine’s life, one of which is her Regency which is where this season ends. Another one would be infamous. You have to do the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre and you have to deal with the end of Charles IX’s reign and you have to deal with the reign of Anjou. And then of course there’s the rivalry she has with her daughter Margaret, who ends up marrying Henry of Navarre. So those are the beats you gotta hit, you know, so we’ll see.

This interview has been edited for clarity.