From its very first shot, The Act has been telling a gruesome, sordid tale. Those who read co-creator Michelle Dean’s original BuzzFeed story about Dee Dee and Gypsy Rose Blanchard knew what they were in for when they tuned in to Hulu’s limited series: the saga of a mother who medically and emotionally abused her daughter, and a daughter who in turn asked her online boyfriend to murder her mother. The show could have been lurid—but Dean has said that The Act strove to ground itself in emotion rather than spectacle.

Which brings us to Wednesday’s finale. Though it’s the episode in which Dee Dee is murdered, her killing does not appear on-screen. Instead, we hear her screams as her overwhelmed daughter shakes in the bathroom, hands planted firmly over her ears in distress.

For Steven Piet, the co-executive producer who directed both the finale and the show’s fifth episode, “Plan B,” zeroing in on Gypsy’s perspective was key. “We didn’t want to see the actual murder,” Piet said. “We didn’t want to focus on the gore of it. We wanted [it] to be about her experience. Ultimately, I think it’s much more effective and emotional that way, and I find the scene after where she actually has to clean the blood off of [her boyfriend’s] face to be far more disturbing than seeing a knife go through skin, you know? . . . The repercussions of the act, I think, resonate far more than the act itself.”

The murder sequence is gut-wrenching, from the moment Gypsy (Joey King) opens the door for her boyfriend, Nick Godejohn (Calum Worthy), to the moment, near the very end of the finale, when she leaves that bright pink house for the last time. The finale, like the rest of the show, unfolds in nonlinear fashion, jumping between flashbacks to Gypsy’s younger years; her time in jail; and the night of the murder. It explores Gypsy’s understanding of both her past and her future—the consequences she’ll face and the paradoxical ways in which she understands herself to be both guilty and victimized. In jail, Gypsy is alone for the first time—a perspective that Piet found important to highlight: “She’s always been with her mother,” he said. The finale tried “to see what that really feels like through her eyes.”

The dark episode is a stark contrast to the other episode Piet directed, “Plan B,” in which Gypsy meets Nick Godejohn in person for the first time. That episode, viewers might remember, had a certain surreal sense of humor to it; the finale is far more emotional. The murder sequence was also technically complicated, particularly during pre-production.

But at a certain point, Piet said, “I felt like my job was to step back as much as I could, and just have the camera in the right place and let these amazing actors do what they do best. . . . At times, I was so lost in their performances that I was forgetting to say ‘Cut.’”

Viewers might notice that as he first enters the Blanchard house, Godejohn begins to fidget as he works up his nerve. “It’s these little changes that he does in his face,” Piet said. “They’re so beautifully realized, and make the character so much more complex than just this evil villain that committed this act.”

“As a director, you feel like you’re the emotional litmus test for the show,” he added. “And when it works so well, it’s just so exciting to be there at that moment.”

Just as important as the murder—or perhaps even more significant—are the two meetings Gypsy has in jail during this episode: one with her father and one with her neighbor Mel (Chloë Sevigny). In each, Gypsy struggles to confront certain realities that differ from the way she understands her life story. Her father debunks Dee Dee’s narrative that he forgot and abandoned Gypsy; Mel insists that Gypsy take some ownership of herself and her actions, stating that she can’t act as a surrogate mother for the girl.

“I don’t think [Gypsy] really wants to confront the truth of the situation and what really happened,” Piet said. “Her relationship with her mother always came from a complicated place. And it’s so hard to unpack in such a small amount of time, but I think her desire for self-preservation . . . I think it’s so much emotion. She needed to tell a story that was going to help her case in the present, but know[s] that there’s so much more unpacking to do.”

“And with her father, you know, I think the takeaway there is: you do have a family; you’re not alone,” Piet added. “And also, you were a victim as well.”

In these conversations, as in the rest of the episode, Gypsy is piecing together a puzzle of sorts. But like the rest of The Act, the finale resists simple conclusions. After Gypsy leaves that haunting pink house, we see her walking into her jail cell in the present. Her mother appears to her, sitting on her cot. Gypsy sits down next to the apparition, placing her head on her mother’s shoulder as the screen fades to black.

“I think that was very important for the whole team,” Piet said, “to not wrap the story up in this neat little bow and to be true to the complicated relationship. And to realize that the blueprint that she has came from this place of love, and through manipulation. But she’s going to need years of therapy with a professional she can trust to confront the years of abuse and actions she took to get away from that abuse. And I think maybe one day, with that work, she can overcome the grip that I think her mother still has on her. What we want viewers to take away is that her mother still has that grip on her, and it’s not something that’s just easily removed. . . . She wanted a quick answer, but there is no quick answer to what she went through.”

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