Obliterated Ending Explained: Did the Team Defuse the Bomb? Who is Lana? Is Trunk Really Leaving the Team?
Obliterated will be available on Netflix from 30 November 2023. This is the new TV series created by the creators of Cobra Kai, which is based on the story of a special forces team that foils a lethal threat in the city of Las Vegas. In particular, it is an adrenaline-pumping action comedy. The team throws a party to celebrate, only to discover that the defused bomb is fake. The team, who is under the influence of various substances, must try to recover the real device to save the world, while also struggling with their problems. But let’s see together what happens in the finale and what is known about the second season.
After the great success achieved on Netflix, the cast and creators of the Obliterated series, Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz, and Hayden Schlossberg, answered all the fans’ questions about the finale and anticipated what could happen in the future, if a second season was confirmed. In the series, a group of bizarre government agents realizes that the nuclear bomb they deactivated was a fake and that Las Vegas is still at risk, so they have to interrupt their celebrations, clear their minds, and work even harder to disarm the weapon that threatens to obliterate Sin City (and all the revelers within it). In the final moments before the bomb explodes, ordnance expert Hagerty (C. Thomas Howell) rides into a casino on a camel and saves the day. But how did we get to this? And what does this mean for the future of the team? Let’s find out together!
Obliterated Ending Explained: Summary Recap
In the finale of Obliterated, Ava and her team try to save the world. Meanwhile, Lana is struggling to come to her senses after seeing her brother die. Lana declares that her goal now is to move forward and do everything she can to see the world fall apart. Meanwhile, the CIA director lets Ava know that the news about the bomb has hit the media and the White House is distancing itself from them. Therefore, they do not have all the resources needed to solve the problem. Despite this, they do everything they can to make sure they can find Lana. Meanwhile, Trunk is beaten by a group of men hired by Lana.
Ava and Chad then get stuck in an elevator, while Lana’s two Russian hitmen start shooting at them. During this fight, Ava manages to eliminate one of the two killers. Chad risks his life for her, grabbing the other hitman and falling into the void with him. Both appear to be dead. The team tries to regroup, while Ava lets everyone know that Chad is dead. Soon after, she meets Lana and her men. Ava tries to convince her that she can be a better person than this. But Lana doesn’t listen to reason and a fight begins. And now Chad reappears, thus proving that he is not dead and saving Ava again.
Obliterated Ending Explained: Did the Team Defuse the Bomb?
Let’s start with the first twist. Lana is not who she says she is but the sister of the series’ big band, Ivan Koslov. Her real name is Anastasia Koslov and it is she who has the bomb and allows her brother to escape from prison by organizing an exchange with the FBI which, after the failure of Ava’s team, is now in charge of the operation with Agent Ferguson. Ava and her agents, however, don’t give up and decide to try to get to the bomb independently to defuse it even if they still can’t find Hagerty who, in the meantime, has even gotten married in Las Vegas. Thanks to the help of every member of the team, Ava and the others find Anastasia and she starts a fight to get hold of the bomb which, however, turns out to be a fake because the real one was hidden inside a casino slot machine. Thanks to Maya’s help, the boys find the bomb but there are only a few minutes left before the explosion.
When they seem doomed and Paul is ready to sacrifice himself for everyone by taking the bomb to the desert to explode, he is seen entering the Hagerty Casino on the same camel as the party from the first episode of the series. The man, now awake after his long sleep and ready to do his job, approaches the bomb but one very important thing is missing, a Michael Bublé song in the background necessary for him to concentrate. No one manages to play the song from their cell phone but at a certain point, his new wife starts singing Bublé and that’s how Hagerty defuses the bomb, and everyone is saved. At the end of the episode, we see all the characters celebrating. Trunk will leave the team to work with Lady Gaga, Maya is now more confident and flirts with boys without having problems, Paul has made peace with himself and his feelings of guilt, Angela Gomez has let the girl go with whom she had had a fling causing her to get back with her husband and Ava and McKnight end up in bed together, this time, all the way. This is how Obliterated ends.
Did the Team Defuse the Bomb?
Yes, thanks to the magic of teamwork. In the finale, Maya discovers that Anastasia (Alyson Gorske) – formerly known as Lana, who we’ll get to in a bit – has hidden the real nuclear bomb in a slot machine at the Plaza Hotel. “From the beginning, we knew we wanted the story to take place in Las Vegas and we kept thinking they were going to go all over the city and into the desert to try to get the bomb. After all, where is it? “, explains co-creator Schlossberg. “We thought putting it inside a slot machine was the best place”. This decision leads to Hagerty‘s glorious slow-motion ride to glory. After being separated from the team for most of the day, he manages to reach the site of the explosion and gets to work, with the help of his favorite Michael Bublé covers, performed live by his new wife (Lindsey Kraft). At the last second, he cuts the right wire and disarms the nuclear bomb once and for all.
“It’s the last song you expect from Hagerty”, Hurwitz tells Tudum of the song choice. “In our early plans, we were planning to have Bublé perform in Las Vegas throughout the season and have him appear in the finale, whereas in our initial scripts, at the very end, Bublé shows up and sings live. He was on tour while we were shooting, so we made a change to the script that we think turned out even better from a character perspective”.
Who is Lana?
The Las Vegas party girl the gang picked up during the mission was not the well-meaning woman she pretended to be Lana was Anastasia Koslov, the presumably dead sister of villain Ivan Koslov (Costa Ronin). “When we were casting, we wrote scenes with Lana’s voice and scenes with Anastasia’s voice”, explains Hurwitz. “Alyson Gorske, from her first audition, left us speechless. The biggest surprise for us was that it was her first major acting role in Hollywood. We called her back a couple of times just to see what kind of things she could do. She showed up on set every day and made a splash, even having to learn the dialogue in Russian, sometimes at the last minute. It was crucial to find someone who could play both roles convincingly”. So, Gorske auditioned for some scenes as Lana and others as Anastasia and was immediately enthusiastic about the opportunity to play such contrasting characters in Obliterated. “Lana is the typical party girl, in sexy, super tight clothes, showing everything off”, says Gorske. “But Anastasia has bad bitch energy! It was so intriguing”.
Why Couldn’t Trunk Eat Even a Bite?
Trunk (Terrence Terrell) is a highly trained and very fit Navy SEAL who needs a constant supply to keep his engine running. Thwarted at every turn in his quest for snacks, his incessant hunger becomes a source of suspense almost equal to the show’s literal time bomb. Schlossberg explains: “We come from the Harold & Kumar universe, where everything revolves around the desire to eat, to get drunk or to get high, and you want to absorb all this with food. So, we had Trunk, at the beginning of the series, take a bunch of weed gum and be drunk. So, he’s starving. In episode 2 he is hungry. And then he has all these moments where he’s almost able to eat, and at the end of the series you’re like, “Again? Are you still playing this card?”. And we do it. It strikes us all the time, but it all leads to an extraordinary result”. This finale includes a perfectly choreographed kitchen fight scene involving a chocolate fountain. “I call it the Popeye scene,” Terrell tells Tudum. “We went full throttle with the food, and they had prepared so much food because they thought we would have to shoot the scenes multiple times. I did almost everything in one take”.
Is Trunk Really Leaving the Team?
In episode 6, Trunk reveals that he wants to leave the military for a more lavish lifestyle, namely becoming Lady Gaga’s bodyguard. But after the epic final highs of Obliterated, Terrell isn’t so sure his character is ready to leave his friends behind. “He loves McKnight too much. The bond with McKnight surpasses everything,” Terrell revealed. “The fact that Trunk offers McKnight one of his hash browns is a testament to his loyalty and love for him. “The fact that he is willing to share his food says it all. So, he’s not going anywhere,” he added.
Are there any Cobra Kai Easter Eggs?
For the most part, Obliterated is full of action, unexpected plot twists, and plot twists that would never happen in Cobra Kai. In this regard, Hurwitz commented: “We love doing Cobra Kai, but our roots are in R-rated comedy. It was fun to unleash our creativity and do the kind of R-rated comedy we’ve always done but also bring in the action we fell in love with while making Cobra Kai. Everything we don’t do in Cobra Kai is present in Obliterated“. That said, “there’s a Cobra Kai Easter egg,” says Heald. “One of our series regulars appears on the show, but it’s a matter of a second: if you blink once, you miss it.” Courtney Henggeler, who plays Amanda LaRusso, was shadowing one of our directors. She will become a director in the future and had the opportunity to be on set and have fun with all of us. She ended up attending Hagerty’s wedding and was seated next to Joe Piarulli, one of our writers on Cobra Kai and Obliterated. “Plus, although it’s not seen on screen, the stuntman who handled Hagerty falling naked onto a glass table also played a cop in an episode of Cobra Kai.
Are Ava and McKnight Getting Together?
The Netflix series presents viewers with two different but equally strong heroes: McKnight (Nick Zano) represents an ’80s-style action hero, while Ava Winters (Shelley Hennig) is a modern iteration of the archetype. Says Schlossberg: “There would be a natural antagonism between Ava, who represents the intelligence side of the operation, and McKnight, who represents the raw muscle. He’s the kind of wild, old-school character who comes and jumps from a building to a car. We like the idea that these two people, who have clashed throughout the mission, are made for each other”.
Explains Heald: “We love that McKnight has this vulnerability from the first episode. You’re used to seeing an action hero like Stallone or Schwarzenegger, but you don’t see what he’s like beneath the surface. He has a crush. Nick and Shelley had immediate chemistry. They are both very strong and funny actors. So, whatever we proposed to them, they were ready and gave their all. We’re happy there was a fulfilling romance throughout the season”. But Zano and Hennig are unsure of the couple’s future. “They might fly too close to the sun”, says Zano. Meanwhile, Hennig jokes: “It will be a relationship… that will never die”.
Is Lana Really Gone?
The answer is: absolutely not. In the finale, Ava asks the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police to pick up Anastasia and place her in custody, and that’s the last we see of the Obliterated supervillain. “You better come back. He’s not done yet. She still has a lot of work to do,” says Gorske. “I don’t think Anastasia takes defeat well… Everywhere she goes, she’ll come up with something ingenious, bigger and evil. So be careful!“. Ava herself is also keeping her fingers crossed that Lana doesn’t go off the board in Obliterated. “I want it to be an issue for the team in the future because I love Alyson,” Hennig says.
Will There Be Another Mission For Our Team?
“Absolutely,” confirms Heald. “We look at each subsequent season of Obliterated as a great cinematic sequel. There’s Die Hard and everything ends. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a Die Hard 2, perhaps in a different city, with different stakes and suspense, but with the same team, we know and love having to return to action under less-than-ideal circumstances. “Hennig also has his ideas for the team’s future. “More debauchery, but in a tropical setting,” he says. “More camels. And even some kangaroos“.
