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It's probably not the one you think
[Warning: The following contains spoilers for the season finale of The Afterparty. Read at your own risk!]
Hopefully, by now you've finished Season 1 of The Afterparty, the delightful murder-mystery comedy starring Tiffany Haddish as determined Detective Danner, who must crack the case of who killed pop star Xavier (Dave Franco) on the night of his 15-year high school reunion. Each episode followed a different guest/suspect at the reunion afterparty where Xavier was murdered and changed genre based on who was giving their statement to Danner.
In the end, it was Yasper (Ben Schwartz) who pushed Xavier over the edge when the pop star, who was Yasper's former bandmate, refused to bless a track for Yasper and give him a leg-up in the industry. Yasper got to give his version of events in Episode 3, which was a musical episode and is what originally puts Danner on his trail. Meanwhile, series creator Chris Miller was hoping the episode, and Schwartz's charm, would have the opposite effect on the audience.
"What's great is that he doesn't seem like the type of person who would do that, which is why you would hopefully not suspect him. You're like 'Oh, he's just too joyful and silly to be doing something like that,'" Miller told TV Guide. Miller also praised Schwartz's skills. "He is the type of person I kind of assumed could sing. He does animation voices. Other than his two-note Jean-Ralphio croons that he would do on Parks and Rec, I don't think we've ever heard him sing. I've never seen him dance, but he does have amazing precision with his body, if you've ever watched him do improv. It's been really fun to let everybody see so many great sides of him, besides the singing and dancing — the sort of gravitas and the real moments of acting that he gets to do in the finale really show a side of him that a lot of people haven't seen."
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One person who was definitely surprised by the reveal that Yasper was the killer was Aniq (Sam Richardson), Yasper's best friend and the main suspect for most of the season. While Yasper did put a lot of effort into trying to exonerate his friend over the course of the entire season, Aniq wasn't able to get past the fact that Yasper put him in that situation in the first place, and that, you know, Yasper killed a guy.
"We talked about whether he should be just cruelly evil and trying to frame Aniq, but it felt much [sweeter] and more true to who he was that this is his friend. The psychology of this character is that he wouldn't want his best friend to get in trouble for this," Miller explained. "It's a terrible turn of events that he was hoping someone else would take the fall or [that the case would] just be left unsolved. The idea that his buddy might have to take the fall for him is terrifying, which is what motivates him to be really, really passionate about getting Aniq off the hook."
"That's the complicated thing that makes the show interesting to me. You can be really close to somebody who could do something terrible. That's part of this show," executive producer Phil Lord added.
The dynamics between a murderer and his best friend that almost took the fall for the crime are not the only complicated aspects of the show. Miller spent over a decade developing the concept, and while Yasper was the killer from Day 1, almost everything else about the series evolved from his first draft to what premiered on Apple TV+ over the course of eight weeks.
Filming the multi-genre spectacle was no small feat either. Miller revealed which episodes stumped him the most, and there was a different answer for every part of production.
"From a production standpoint, the animated one was the hardest because there's a whole separate team and a whole separate process that had to be happening concurrently with the rest of the episodes. The hardest of the live-action ones to produce was probably the musical because you have to write and produce songs and then get a bunch of choreography, and then do all this complicated lighting and camera stuff," Miller detailed. "From a story [perspective], I think the most complex one is the high school story because it's everybody's stories intertwining and coming together. Even though Walt is narrating, it's like everybody gets a chance to sort of temporarily be the protagonist of that episode. It has to seamlessly hand off from one story to the next and effect all of the storylines."
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And things will only continue to get complicated when fans get the chance to reunite with Detective Danner in the already announced Season 2. While Miller and Lord couldn't reveal too much about the season outside of the fact that Danner would be investigating a new case, they could confirm it probably won't have anything to do with another reunion — at least not with this group.
"I imagine they're probably avoiding reunions for a while. That would be my take," Miller said. "If I had a traumatic 15th reunion, I wouldn't be jumping at the chance to go to the 20th."
The Afterparty Season 1 is now streaming on Apple TV+. Season 2 is currently in the works.