‘Last Resort’ Series Finale: What Could Have Gone Differently?

As saddened as we were to see the promising ABC drama 'Last Resort' air its series finale after only 13 episodes, at the very least series creator Shawn Ryan had the option to end the series as he so chose. Had last night's "Controlled Flight into Terrain" not been the series finale however, how might the remaining nine episodes of the season gone differently? Creator Shawn Ryan shares an alternate ending for 'Last Resort' inside!

Buzz-worthy and well-received though its pilot may have been, 'Last Resort' ultimately struck out with ABC's audiences, and closed its run with last night's climactic finale "Controlled Flight into Terrain." The adventure may be over for Captain Marcus Chaplin (Andre Braugher) and his crew, but could the story have gone differently if ABC granted the series additional episodes?

Series creator and show-runner Shawn Ryan spoke to HitFix about future plans, revealing:

We talked a lot about the back-nine. We pitched it to the network back in September or October. That pitch was very well-received. We were about to dissolve the American blockade. In many ways, a lot of the first 13 episodes were about survival, and we were going to transfer in the last 9 to, ‘If survival isn't the main issue, if we're being left alone, what is this place?’ we were going to do the opposite, where all of a sudden, things are open on the island, and they've become icons for a certain segment of the world's population.

All of a sudden, these boats arrive with people who want to be part of this movement. And what do you do about those people? Can those people be trusted? Is there an assassin among those people? One of those people was going to be Marcus's surviving son, who had always disagreed with him politically, but who now looked upon Marcus's actions as something admirable, even though Marcus thinks that his son was misconstruing that. There was going to be a woman with his son who would be a foil for Marcus, philosophically and romantically.  We were going to do a much bigger story about how Christine gets saved. We were going to deal with the island and the fact that there were valuable minerals on it that needed to be saved, things like that. We had definite plans on where we were going to go.

What say you? Are you disappointed 'Last Resort' never got to move beyond 13 episodes? How would you like to have seen the series end? Give us your pitches in the comments!