The first question he asks Furious it’s not who he killed. It’s not even who will catch whom. The much more uncomfortable question is another: to what extent are we willing to justify a person when we understand the reasons for his anger?
The new thriller series created by Elizabeth Meriwether, an author best known for New Girl And The Dropoutpits two women seemingly on opposite sides of the law against each other. Alice Black, played by Emmy Rossum, is an FBI agent engaged in the hunt for a mysterious and methodical serial killer, Catherine, played by Lola Petticrew. But as their lives begin to intertwine, the distinction between right and wrong becomes less and less reassuring.
Streaming from July 27th, with the first three episodes available upon debut and a new appointment every Monday until the finale on August 31st, Furious also stars Scoot McNairy, Quincy Tyler Bernstine and Jake Lacy. In the United States it will be distributed by Hulu, while internationally it will arrive on Disney+.
Calling it just a crime series, however, means stopping at the surface. Because the investigation at the center of the story is above all a tool for observing two women marked by violence, underestimation and the failure of institutions. Two women who react in different ways, but perhaps not as distant as they would like to believe.
Two women in front of the same mirror
Alice Black presents herself as a controlled, introverted figure, almost separated from her emotions. The trauma she carries with her makes her problematic in her private life, but extremely effective at work. It is precisely this contradiction that makes her a difficult character to classify.
“Sometimes our superpowers are also the most complicated parts of us,” Emmy Rossum explained to us. According to the actress, Alice feels an almost magnetic attraction towards Catherine because the two women are, in reality, “mirrors of each other”. Both seek justice and both have been underestimated. What separates them is above all the method: Alice continues to move within a legal system whose failures she knows perfectly well; Catherine instead chose an external, radical and explosive path.
It is not the classic contrast between investigator and murderer. Furious progressively builds a gray area in which the distance between the protagonists shortens. Alice chases Catherine, but at the same time she recognizes something of herself in the woman she chases. And the spectator is dragged into the same process: first he observes, then he understands, finally he risks siding with those who carry out actions that, outside of fiction, he would condemn without hesitation.
Emmy Rossum openly admits it. Reading the scripts and watching Lola Petticrew’s performance, she found herself wondering if she was really identifying with a serial killer. The fascination, he explained, also arises from the desire to understand what can push a person beyond a seemingly insurmountable limit and whether, within us, there are recognizable fragments of the same impulse.
Panorama’s question: where does justice end?
It is on this border that the question posed by Panorama to Emmy Rossum and Elizabeth Meriwether was focused: Alice walks a very thin line between justice and obsession throughout the series. How did they determine where that line was? And was there a moment when they realized that the character was now over her, even if she wasn’t aware of it yet?
For Meriwether, that line was never to be definitively drawn. The tension of the series arises precisely from the impossibility for the audience to feel safe in their beliefs. There is no stable moment in which it is possible to decide who is the good guy and who is the bad guy: each new revelation changes the judgment on the characters, forcing the viewer to continually ask himself who he is rooting for and why.
“I wanted the audience to constantly remain in balance with their feelings,” said the creator. The structure of the story in fact proceeds in layers: the characters are built, observed and then slowly stripped of the certainties that seemed to define them.
Rossum, however, questioned the idea that obsession should necessarily be considered a flaw. “To do something really well you have to be a little obsessed,” he observed. It is a characteristic that the actress found in the agents and members of the police force she met during the preparation of the series: people for whom work does not just represent a profession, but an essential component of identity.
The problem arises when that dedication stops being a tool and becomes the only possible way to exist. When the mission swallows the person. When finding the truth is no longer enough and the need to get to the end takes the place of any other relationship, responsibility or form of self-control.
That’s where Alice gets really interesting. Not when she investigates, but when she can no longer imagine herself outside the investigation.
Women’s anger is not a trend
The title of the series leaves no room for misunderstanding. Furious speaks of fury, but refuses to turn it into a reassuring slogan or a simple revenge fantasy.
Elizabeth Meriwether explained that she didn’t want to make a show that was just angry. Anger can liberate, give movement and become the only way to react to an injustice. But it can also consume, trap and lead to self-sabotage. When it takes control, it risks taking away a part of the person’s humanity.
The series therefore does not offer an indiscriminate celebration of female revenge. Rather, it shows the allure and price of fury, questioning what remains of a person after that force has become their only language.
Lola Petticrew also rejected the temptation to link the story to a single news story or to a particular predator who became a symbol of male power. It would be reductive, he argued, because the oppressive systems linked to patriarchy and misogyny are much older and deeper than a name that recently appeared in the newspapers. The reference is already contained in the title: the Erinyes, or Furies, belong to Greek mythology and have embodied revenge against violations of the moral order for centuries.
Rossum underlined a further paradox: when major cases of violence are reported, often the best-known name remains that of the man who carried it out, while the women who suffered it are transformed into numbers, extras or voiceless victims. Furious try to reverse that perspective. At the center is not the allure of the predator, but what happens to women when the promised justice does not arrive.
The myth of the “perfect victim”
One of the strongest passages of the press conference came from Lola Petticrew. The actress explained that the series works to dismantle the idea of the “perfect victim”: the innocent, blameless and almost angelic girl who the public immediately considers worthy of protection.
Representing only that type of victim, Petticrew argues, carries a dangerous consequence. It is implicitly suggesting that those who do not fit that model – those who are contradictory, unpleasant, sexually liberated, angry or morally flawed – may deserve less solidarity.
Catherine is instead built to be complex, lovable and scary at the same time. The audience enters the story bringing with them their own moral limitations; the series progressively shifts them, until it leads him to justify behaviors that he would previously have considered unacceptable.
This is probably the most successful and most disturbing operation of Furious: ask not whether Catherine is guilty, but how important her reasons are when we have to judge her. And, at the same time, don’t ask if Alice is on the right side, but how far she can go before she stops being.
The dark side of Emmy Rossum
For Emmy Rossum, Alice represents a further step in a career increasingly attracted to characters that are difficult to immediately understand. After Fiona Gallagher in Shameless and the radical transformation of Angelynethe actress said she seeks out roles that cause her initial judgment, confusion or even shame.
“I’m fascinated by moral gray areas,” she explained. Having emerged from the phase of ingénue roles offered her the opportunity to play imperfect, dynamic women with a history behind them. Characters who cannot be reduced to the alternative between angel and devil, because human reality is much messier.
Alice fully belongs in this gallery. She is a woman who has learned to disconnect from her most vulnerable parts to survive violence, work in a male-dominated environment and face extreme situations on a daily basis. Rossum, who defines himself as a person capable of feeling anything intensely, had to search within himself for the emotional silence of the character, his control and the need to go to the extreme to still be able to feel something.
To prepare, she and Quincy Tyler Bernstine spent time with FBI agents and professionals working in investigative units, studying not only the technical aspects of the job but also the psychological toll it takes. Bernstine also spoke with people involved in task forces against sex trafficking, while other cast members focused on the consequences of the trade on family and private lives.
No longer knowing who to root for
Elizabeth Meriwether says she has long been a fan of thrillers and crime stories. After days spent in comedy writers’ rooms, he would come home and relax by watching murder stories. Behind the apparent contrast between New Girl And Furioushe argues, the same curiosity exists: observing people in extreme moments and understanding what choices they make when every daily convention is swept away.
In FuriousHowever, the deepest mystery does not concern the identity of the killer. The audience knows where to look. Suspense arises from the progressive collapse of moral categories.
Alice and Catherine are both looking for something they call justice. They both believe they act because no one else will. Both turn pain into a mission. And the closer they get, the more difficult it becomes to determine who is chasing whom.
The series invites us to play detective, but then takes away the pleasure of a simple solution. It allows us to judge, to force us immediately afterwards to doubt our own verdict. And when the line between justice and obsession finally becomes visible, perhaps it has already been crossed.
Not just from Alice. Even from those who watch.
