There are only four episodes left until the Grand Hotel season 1 finale and the stakes are only getting higher. Danny’s girlfriend, Heather, checked into the Grand Riviera at the end of the Aug. 12 episode just as Danny was being welcomed into Alicia’s family. HollywoodLife spoke EXCLUSIVELY with Lincoln Younes at the ABC’s summer TCA party on Aug. 5 all about what’s coming up. Brace yourselves, Grand Hotel fans. “Things get a lot messier,” Lincoln teased. “There are so many twists that no one will expect because we didn’t expect them. We had bets on set about what actually happened to Sky, and all of us were wrong. What I can say is you will find out what happened to Sky by the end of the season.”
With Danny’s former girlfriend at the hotel, does this mean trouble in paradise for Danny and Alicia? Probably. HollwoodLife asked Lincoln whether or not he thinks Alicia could forgive Danny if she found out about the secrets he’s been keeping. “That’s yet to be seen,” he said. “Alicia is a very strong, informed, smart woman. She has grand ambitions and Danny’s complications might get in the way of that. So it’s really her balancing her priorities and seeing whether her feelings justify the effort involved.”
However, regardless of what happens, Lincoln does believe that Danny and Alicia are endgame. “I think so,” Lincoln admitted. “I think there’s undeniable chemistry. I think there’s an inevitability to their affection. Look, at the end of the day, things get messed up in life. We have a very twisted world at the moment. At the core of everything is either love or fear. There’s so much fear in this world. People want to cling onto love, and I think the audience, and I think the cast and the creatives, can see the art in this show and the love. I think that’s what is at the core because yes, it’s beautiful, yes, it has interesting storylines, but if a show doesn’t have heart, if it doesn’t have a love at its core, people don’t stay.”
Danny’s search for his sister has been his driving force throughout the entire season. Lincoln opened up about his character’s quest to find his sister and the possible emotional consequences of thinking about all of the outcomes. “It underlies everything he does,” Lincoln continued. “You see Danny quite concerned a lot of the time in the show. He can be a lot more serious than the other characters because the ramifications of his sister being missing are extreme. That was his anchor in life. She was the one person that he was closest to. He didn’t really have a family. She was the only point of contact, and he has a big underlying protective aspect around her. He’s felt like he always needed to protect her, and she’s missing now. He doesn’t know what’s happened to her. There is major guilt, and I think that would cripple him if he fed into it too much.”
The show hasn’t been renewed for a second season yet but Lincoln already has ideas about what he’d like to see next season. “There are a lot of aspects to Danny that are explored a little bit this season but would be extrapolated on in a second season, like his physical proficiency, where he learned a lot of the stuff that he knows that they’ve alluded to, but they haven’t really gone into because I think this season is more about the search for Sky and about his relationship with Alicia. But there is a lot of stuff with Danny that doesn’t add up still and that was a conscious decision on the creatives’ behalf because there’s a lot scope for this show. It’s not just Danny. They’ve managed to create 11 engaging characters that all have backstories that are interesting and added into that the relationships of all of them intertwining to make it even messier and wonderfully complicated. There’s just a lot of scope for the show. I think it could go for quite a few seasons without it feeling contrived.” Grand Hotel airs Mondays at 10 p.m. on ABC.