After four seasons, the co-creators and showrunners said goodbye to their Netflix comedy about a kidnapping victim who had to learn to live in the real world after spending her formative years in an underground bunker in January 2019. At the timethat it would have felt “reductive” to force Kimmy into a romantic relationship by series’ end, so instead the story focused on her reconnecting with her mother and becoming a successful children’s book author.
“We did decide early on that we would throw caution to the wind and do three stories like we usually do in the regular episodes, which was new for interactive,” Fey says. Fey and Carlock came into the breaking of the story for this special already knowing what they wanted for Kimmy, so Carlock notes that “in some cases, we were working backwards” to figure out how Kimmy would get to her end point, as well as what other stories would filter in around her main quest.
But unlike many previous interactive programming, if a viewer make too many wrong choices and ends up on a path that strays too far from what Kimmy would really do, the story comes to an abrupt end and sends the viewer back to an earlier point to make a better choice. Reliving some moments also comes with the opportunity to discover new details and pops of humor.