The First Kill finale ended with a heartbreaking twist for Calliet shippers. After finding out that Juliette turned Theo into a vampire to save his life, Calliope broke things off with Juliette. Cal vowed to find a way to kill Juliette and all the other Legacy vampires. After Juliette drove off in tears, Cal fled her house and went off running. Where? That remains to be seen.
“I don’t even think Cal knows where she’s going,” Imani told HollywoodLife EXCLUSIVELY. “I think Cal is in a place where her world is completely scrambled. Everything she’s ever been sure about, all that self-awareness, or all that sense of sureness completely falls through her hands like sand.”
She continued, “At the beginning, we see how much she relies on and confides in her family, and how important it is to be a part of her family and to feel like she’s a member of her family. She’s willing to go to any ends of the earth to prove her worthiness to her family. And then these feelings introduce themselves to her that she didn’t know or wasn’t expecting to feel. In Juliette, she sees an outlet where she’s able to express herself in ways that she could never express herself that way to her family, because of her predestined duty to her family. I think when things hit the fan with her family, and then things hit the fan with this other being that almost has become of equal importance in her life and an equal outlet in her life, I feel like she probably feels like she doesn’t have any options. Who else does she turn to? I think Cal’s a lot like her mom in the sense that when it gets tough, she’ll put the gloves on and start boxing. But I think it goes beyond that now. I feel like she just needed to escape, and I don’t know where but I think the point is just to get away.”
Some may interpret Cal running off to mean she could be going after Juliette to make amends, but Imani doesn’t see it that way. She doesn’t think Cal is ready to forgive Juliette whatsoever. “I don’t think that at all. I could be wrong. I’m not a writer, but I doubt it. Only because it’s all so fresh and, again, the last words she told Juliette do not sound like she’s going to say that and then run to her house and apologize,” Imani said.
However, the actress did admit that she could see Cal one day getting to a point where she accepts Theo’s fate as a vampire. “Hypothetically, I could see that, only because Cal loves her brother so much. That is her confidant, that is her bestie,” Imani told HollywoodLife.
A potential season 2 could see very different versions of Cal and Juliette. Sarah Catherine Hook told HollywoodLife that we could see a darker side of Juliette after the Cal breakup and taking down Elinor.
“I feel like in the same ways that Juliette could possibly be preparing herself to take on that element of herself, Cal’s training just as hard,” Imani responded. “Cal meant everything she said when she said that to Juliette when they broke up. The one thing that’s so awesome about this story, or at least the Burns family characters when they go on these missions, it’s not just driven because they see it as a job. There’s personal attachment. There are personal reasons and emotional reasons why they go as hard as they do on these missions.” She added that this could be “Cal’s emotional story that’ll drive her and make her that monster hunter that she thought she was earlier in the season, but now she’s really going to become.”
When asked if Cal has it in her to truly hurt Juliette, Imani revealed, “I think she can. I don’t know if she would, but I think she can. I know she can, but I don’t know if she would. I don’t know. Juliette woke up something different in Calliope. But in the same breath to have been hurt so deeply that way, that’s how villain origin stories form, from a great betrayal or a broken heart. That’s how we get these kinds of villains that go on these sprees where they’re like, I don’t care. I have no feelings. I turned them off a long time ago.”
The show has already risen to the ranks of Netflix’s top 10 just days after its release. If First Kill gets a season 2, Imani has some ideas about Cal’s future arc.
“I want to see the version of Calliope that isn’t hell-bent on proving who she is to her family,” Imani told HollywoodLife. “I want to see a version of Calliope that is utterly and completely independent in her thinking and does not need the reassurance or the validation from her family. I think it’d be interesting to see what that kind of Calliope looks like. I feel like it can make her maybe a little rebellious. When she sees her family, she sees structure, she sees order, and she sees a guild code of honor that she follows. But when the guild fails her — and in a way she feels like her family is not there for her — all she has is what’s up top. I’m interested to see what decision she makes when she doesn’t confide in those that she’s been taught to trust.” First Kill is now streaming on Netflix.