Summary

Nicdao discusses Poppy’s surprising moment with Ian in the season 4 finale and shares that she believes they were always leading toward it.

Aside from THAT moment in the finale, Nicdao discusses Poppy’s transformative arc this season, centered around her pregnancy and how it forces Poppy to make selfish choices.

This article contains spoilers for the Mythic Quest season 4 finale.
Charlotte Nicdao is best known for her role as Poppy Li in AppleTV+’s Mythic Quest, where she plays a talented game developer navigating the chaotic world of the video game industry — and therefore central to one of the season 4 finale’s most shocking moments. In season 4, Poppy’s storyline takes a hard turn as she navigates unexpected personal developments, including a complicated relationship with Ian (Rob McElhenney) and a surprising pregnancy. This new phase of her character challenges her focus on work and forces her to confront selfish decisions for personal growth, providing some interesting building blocks for her to build on as the transformation of Poppy continues through future seasons.
In a new interview with Collider’s Joe Schmidt, Nicdao discusses the surprising moment in the Mythic Quest season finale, where Poppy and Ian share a shocking moment for longtime fans when they kiss. Talking through the romantic moment, Nicdao shares her initial hesitation about the storyline, but she came to see it as a natural development in their complex relationship. Outside of the kiss, Nicdao discusses Poppy’s season 4 pregnancy plot, highlighting how it forces Poppy to make selfish decisions and shift her focus from work to her own growth, and how she looks forward to exploring Poppy’s journal as an unconventional, possibly flawed mother.

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Mythic Quest’s Shocking Season 4 Finale

“…this particular thing, I genuinely never thought would happen.”

Image via Apple TV+

COLLIDER: What the hell did I just see in that finale?
CHARLOTTE NICDAO: I have a feeling that that’s gonna be like the main response from our long-time audience, and if I’m being honest, it was my first response as well when that final bit of the finale was pitched to me. I was like, “WHAT?!” This is soooo — I mean, I think that this whole season, we’ve been toying with a lot of unexpected things, but this particular thing, I genuinely never thought would happen in the show. I’m not important or famous enough to be above looking at what people are saying about my TV show online, and I have a feeling from knowing how our audience feels about these two characters that there’s going to be a 50-50 divide of people who are like, “Oh my god, why would you do this to these two characters? I can’t stand it.” And 50% who will be like, “Thank God. Finally, this is what I wanted to see.”
And I suppose what I would say to both camps is, we care about these characters just as much as you. We think about them, if not more than you. And the ideas that we have in terms of what we’d like to explore with this particular thing happening to their very complicated, already, relationship is going to be just as complex as they’ve always been and also really, really funny.
The last time we talked was at the beginning of the season, and we talked about Poppy and Ian’s relationship, which comes to a head in a crazy way here. And you mentioned the word “codependency.” You mentioned that they were codependent and that is — obviously, for people who have been through relationship counseling or, you know, people who have had bad relationships — codependency is a bad word. It’s a trigger word for some people. So, do you see this as a positive or negative thing? Not in the context of the show, because, obviously, in the of the show, it’s positive, entertaining. But you’ve been playing Poppy for five years now, through a pandemic and through all the changes. So how do you see this as an impact on your character?
NICDAO: Look, my personal opinion as Charlotte, if Poppy was my best friend, I would be like, “What are you doing? Why on earth would you let this happen? You were just on this healthy road. You were finding some independence from this relationship. You’re starting a life for yourself outside of work. And now you’ve gone and done this.” I would not be approving.
At the same time, we had this discussion in the lead up to making the decision, to have this happen, about how — it’s that very When Harry Met Sally thing, like how unusual it would be to have two characters who were this intertwined in each other’s lives, this dependent on each other, this intimate in so many ways, both heterosexual, to never even just on one drunken night, like be like, “What if?” And then what happens after that, I don’t think is what would happen in When Harry Met Sally, but I do think that it makes a lot of real world sense that at some point in this relationship, this was probably going to happen.
Was This Always the Plan for Poppy?

“This whole time, both of these characters are leading toward this moment…”

Image via Apple TV+

That brings me to my other question to follow up for that was, “Was this always the plan?” And it doesn’t sound like that’s the case.
NICDAO: No, that wasn’t. And it was also not always the plan that season 4 would see Poppy be pregnant. But I think one of the really fun things about the show is that it’s collaborative, and it’s responsive. And so I had this great conversation with [Executive Producer] Megan Ganz at the start of the season, where she was like, “Listen.” Because we’d already discussed having Poppy be pregnant and how that might impact the dynamic of her and Ian’s relationship and we sort of thought that would be fun to explore just on its own. And Megan called me at the start of the season and was like, “We’re breaking the end of the season. We’re really naturally feeling where this lands, and it does seem to naturally be landing in a place that we didn’t expect, and I want to run it by you.” And, yes, as I said, when she first said we’re going to have Poppy and Ian kiss, I was like, “Oh, no, that’s terrible. These two, they’re like brother and sister.” And she was like, “I know, that’s what makes it so funny. They absolutely have no business doing this.”
And yet there’s something in their relationship that’s leading there, especially through this season. And I have to admit, as each episode rolled out, I was like, “Oh yeah, this season can’t end any other way than that.” I feel like if you go back to the start of the season, it’s like, “Yep, this has been coming.” This whole time, both of these characters are leading toward this moment, and I’m not saying that this is the moment that then they decide to get married. I think that would be terrible. [laughs] But I think that this needed to happen for them to figure out the next ridiculous iteration of whatever they are.
Yeah, it is funny because in most shows, there’s the whole “Will they or won’t they?” And you expect that kiss to have a payoff where you’re like, “Yeah, I’ve been expecting this the whole time,” and it’s so satisfying. And this is the complete opposite. This is like the rug —
NICDAO: It’s almost like we really found a way for them to have a really great friendship, and these two characters just weren’t having it. They were like, “No! More chaos!” I really wish that I could watch a montage of people seeing this moment of television, because I think, as you say, for a lot of “Will they or won’t theys,” you see two characters that you wanted to get together for a kiss, and you go, “Yes!” And I think that a lot of people are going to see this moment where these two characters kiss and go “NO!” This episode in particular is so fun because Mythic Quest is filled with a lot of selfish people and this really dug into a lot of the selfishness that people have, in what their personal goals are and what their roles are within the company.
And then you kind of finally see two people being selfish for altruistic reasons, to a degree, for reasons that make sense to themselves. So I want to ask you just about how that played into your role.
NICDAO: I mean, this is what I particularly found interesting about having this storyline play out where she was pregnant, because it’s almost the ultimate personal distraction from work. So to take a character who is defined by her work and defined by the people that she works with, and then put her in a situation where, in order to succeed and — let’s face it, she’s an A-plus student — in order to succeed, she’s going to have to make some selfish decisions and some decisions purely for herself and not for her work, not for her partner. It just adds a level of intensity to the way she has to live her life, which I really hope we get to keep exploring … I think there’s a tendency to feel when, once characters are pregnant, they transform into these perfect maternal figures. But I think for Poppy, that’s not going to come naturally to her. And I’d love to see what kind of probably questionable mother she turns into once this baby is born.
Mythic Quest is available to stream on AppleTV+.

Mythic Quest

Release Date

February 7, 2020

Network

Apple TV+

Directors

Todd Biermann, Pete Chatmon, Megan Ganz, Angela Barnes, Steve Welch, Catriona McKenzie, LP, Danny Pudi, Heath Cullens

Writers

Katie McElhenney, Ashly Burch, John Howell Harris, Aparna Nancherla, Naomi Ekperigin, Kyle Mack, Keyonna Taylor, Randall Valdez-Castillo, Emma dePaulo Reid