Five years after Amazon’s award-winning series Transparent became one of the most visible dramatizations of trans life, the series will kill off its central character, Maura Pfefferman, in its feature-length musical series finale. The decision comes after the show fired actor Jeffrey Tambor, who played Maura, following allegations of sexual harassment, which Tambor denied. The episode will open with Maura’s death and focus on how her family makes sense of her death, according to Los Angeles Times. The finale’s premiere date has not yet been announced, but it will likely come in the fall.
“We were all in mourning in many ways, and we all had to process together,” the show’s creator, Jill Soloway, told the Times. “It was important [for the show] to go through all those stages. The show has always been a reflection of who we were and we were mourning our own narrative.”
The finale’s title is the quirkily spelled “The Transparent Muscale Finale.” Soloway told the Times they thought a musical was fitting because it helped reflect how people process real-life events. “People say when they’re making musicals that there are moments when the characters have to sing because they can’t put something into words,” they said. “I think it’s the same thing with what our show went through, we felt like we needed a different way of looking at the family. And we did it through song.”
As for the musical itself, Soloway joked that it’s like “Jewish Christ Superstar or anxious Godspell or Ordinary People on ice. … [It’s a] genderqueer Jewish fantasia.” The Times reports that one song in the film will be titled “Your Boundary Is My Trigger,” which will spotlight Maura’s daughter, Sarah (Amy Landecker), and ex-wife Shelly (Judith Light). “It’s extreme,” Soloway told the paper of the song. “It hits the most extreme high notes. I feel like 67-year-old Jewish moms are going to be seen in a new way.”
Last October, Soloway said they’d been working on the music for the finale with their sister, Faith, and transgender actress-musician Shakina Nayfack.
