The Last Man on Earth

The fourth season of Fox’s post-apocalyptic satire ended with Phil (Will Forte) and his makeshift family suddenly finding themselves surrounded by dozens of unidentified survivors, who emerged from an underground bunker wearing gas masks.

“[These people] went down [into the bunker] when the virus had first started,” Forte revealed on Vulture‘s Good Ones podcast. “They had some kind of medical expert or scientist who knew, ‘At this certain point, the virus will be dormant. You’ll be safe to get back out,’ and they had reached that point. Then they see a bunch of stragglers — us — and we represent a real threat to them, because they thought [everyone] was dead, so they quarantine us. … We eventually communicate with them a little bit [and] they get comfortable with us. They look scary but they end up being nice people.”

Among the bunker people probably would have been one or two famous guest stars, “and eventually we’d all get comfortable with each other,” before they freed at least one of the survivors from quarantine, Forte added. That, in turn, would have proven to be a fatal mistake. “We are immune to the virus, but we’re carriers. And so we would infect them and they’d die like wildfire,” Forte revealed, “and then we’re back to just our little group, and maybe one famous [guest star] we could talk into staying around.” All told, that arc would have lasted “four or five episodes.”