Rachel Bloom talks that surprising Reboot finale and the weirdness of group lunch orders
Reboot star Rachel Bloom walks The A.V. Club through the show's table-setting season-ender—and what she'd like to see if the series gets renewed

[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers of Reboot, which dropped its season one finale on October 25.]
When the first season of Reboot ends, Rachel Bloom’s Hannah Korman, the co-showrunner of the revived 2000s sitcom Step Right Up, is largely where she started: She has the show she wanted to make, and she’s watching her father Gordon (Paul Reiser) walk out the door. Over the preceding seven episodes, we watched their professional and personal relationship gradually warm—and seeing Hannah left alone again was a gut punch.
At its core, Reboot is about dredging up memories from the past. When Hannah approaches Hulu about rebooting Step Right Up, it nearly immediately wins over the network execs. She proposes bringing new attention to a once-beloved but forgotten sitcom, promises to reunite the original cast—Reed Sterling (Keegan Michael Key), Clay Barber (Johnny Knoxville), Zack Johnson (Calum Worthy), and Bree Marie Jensen (Judy Greer)—and adapt the show for a generation raised on prestige-TV binges. When original series creator Gordon shows up, a wrench is thrown into her plans—and we quickly find out that Gordon is Hannah’s father who left her decades before.
With a stacked cast and sharp humor, Reboot has quickly become one of the hottest shows of the fall season. The A.V. Club sat down with star Rachel Bloom to discuss how the season ended and where we go from here.
The A.V. Club: So the final episode got pretty real, compared to the preceding ones, which were a lot wackier. And I’m speaking specifically about Hannah and her relationship with Gordon. It was kind of this bittersweet note, where he leaves her again at the end, but was doing it in a way to protect her. Do you think she sees it that way?
Rachel Bloom: Look, I won’t know for sure until, knock on wood, we have a season two, but if I had to guess, and especially the way I was playing that last scene … it’s an abandonment. I think if you questioned her, she could see the logic in it. I think if it were someone else, she’d see it as maybe more even-keeled, but because it’s her father basically repeating her central trauma, it’s devastating.
In the scene with Peter Gallagher’s character [new studio head Tyler], off-hand, I called Paul “Dad”—that would be the first time Hannah calls her father “Dad” on the show. We don’t highlight it, but, altogether, her standing up for her father is her turning a kind of therapized corner, and I think her father brings her back to square one by abandoning her.
AVC: Obviously, Hannah resented him for a really long time, and it was mainly her motivation for rebooting Step Right Up. But once he was begrudgingly back in her life, it seemed like she realized that missed him in a different way. It’s one thing to have the hole in her life and another to know so acutely what you’re missing.
RB: Absolutely. And beneath the surface, when you’re talking about parental trauma—what Hannah’s gone through, with her father fully leaving them for another family, which is very traumatic, and Gordon is very much in the wrong, none of this is on Hannah—as much as every kid professes to hate their parents, every kid just deep down wants their parents’ love. From what I’ve read, I’m not a doctor, but it is the most base need we have. To finally be getting her father’s love I imagine superseded her need for revenge.