Orphan Black Creator On Latest Episode’s Shocking Ending

“Knowledge of Causes, and Secret Motions of Things” is an exceptional hour of Orphan Black that unquestionably shifts the course of the story in a substantial way; of course, the death of Dr. Leekie is possibly the major development in the episode and has many fans buzzing, especially considering the particular circumstances that caused his demise. On the topic, show creator John Fawcett says, “We knew Dr. Leekie was going to die in season 2. And we knew that was something that we wanted to work towards and was going to be a big part of the Rachel/Dr. Leekie story and be a big part of why we’ve been telling a lot of this backstory. Ultimately, I think we didn’t really know how we were going to do it. We knew we were going to do it, we just didn’t know how we were going to do it. And [co-creator] Graeme [Manson] early on had this idea that Donnie should kill Dr. Leekie. It’s funny because my initial reaction was “that’s ridiculous.” Then we sort of kind of went at it a bunch of different ways: Who would kill him? How would he die? And ultimately we came back to Donnie. We wanted to do it in a surprising sort of strangely comic fashion, and that was the result.” Though it is a great dramatic moment, it wasn’t an easy decision to make, but one that was carefully planned and executed: “Well, I think that obviously Dr. Leekie and Matt Frewer are a big part of our show and it is a very big decision to decide to eliminate a character. We don’t want to just make those decisions lightly, and it really has to have a bearing on not just story structure of the season, but really the big picture also. It has to work towards our end goals. So we designed the first part of the season all the way to episode 7 knowing this was going to come to a head and that Leekie was going to die. We used that as building blocks for that character, and by the time the end came for him, he wanted to build a character that we actually had grown to like and maybe couldn’t entirely trust, but were having some sympathies for. And he wasn’t just a kind of a bad guy. He was kind of in a weird way helping. It’s interesting then to kind of kill off someone that actually the audience and the fans are sort of starting to like and care about. I think it was an important element to building that character and using his death to actually mean something at the end of episode 7, and going forward in the next bunch of episodes. Because Dr. Leekie’s death…the fact that he’s gone or missing or presumed dead or whatever — that informs a bunch of story in the coming episodes.” We cannot wait to see what the rest of the season has in store for our beloved characters. To read the entire interview, which covers the episode’s comedic tone, Cosima and Delphine’s tumultuous relationship, and the awesomeness that comes from a clone impersonating another, check it out here.