If you were already apprehensive about watching tonight’s finale, then reading this post may discourage you from viewing it altogether! It’s one thing when the executive producers tell us the epi will blow our minds (after all, they’re supposed to), but when a reviewer warns you that you’ll be on tenterhooks the entire way and that the action never lets up, then you’d better believe it!

Here’s what Peter Lenkov and Elwood Reid, who co-wrote the season closer together with Paul Zbyszewski, shared with Rick Porter:

So where does that leave us for the season finale next week? Well, the thing McGarrett didn’t get in Japan was Shelburne, but Lenkov says the identity of the mysterious figure is “absolutely resolved” in the final moments of the finale. That doesn’t, however, mean that McGarrett will have all the answers about his father’s death, because Lenkov and writer/co-executive producer Elwood Reid also promise a cliffhanger ending.

“You’re going to be pissed it ends where it ends,” Reid says, noting that next season will most likely pick up immediately after the finale.

The finale is titled “Ua Hala,” which translates to “Death in the Family,” and Lenkov and Reid say the episode will deliver on that ominous promise.

“We thought we did a good job on the [Season 1] finale. We wrote this big episode with a lot stakes; every character had something they could lose,” Lenkov says. “So we sat down and said, how do we top that? … It ends, I think, with bigger stakes this time.” The cliffhanger story will resolve fairly quickly next season, he adds, but “character-wise, it will carry on” for a while into Season 3.

“We think of it as building fires,” Reid says. “There’s a lot of wood on the fire now, and it’s going to give us a lot of stuff to play next season. … The hardest thing as writers is to set stuff up so we have somewhere to go in the next season. This finale — we’re not manufacturing a finale here. Everyone is sort of thrown.”

Lenkov’s one-word description of the finale is “jaw-dropping.”

Taking it a step further in the striking-fear-in-the-hearts-of-fans stakes is Michelle Carlbert, who watched the screener last night (minus the final two minutes, which were deliberately left out):

Last week Hawaii Five-0 Executive Producer Peter Lenkov and Co-Executive Producer Elwood Reid sat down to talk about this year’s season finale. Though they were understandably reluctant to give too much away, they still gave us a good idea of what you can expect tonight.

• Joe is back and will play an integral part in the finale. He brings Steve the information that he has been seeking and fans will finally find out the identity of the mysterious Shelburne.
• Tonight’s episode will have very emotional repercussions for a couple of the team members, including Chin. With these incidents, they will be breaking Chin down so that they can explore building him back up again next season.
  
• Fans should be ready to say goodbye to somebody on the show and the finale will end in a huge cliffhanger. The stakes at the end of this season are even bigger for the team than they were last season.
• Asked to describe the finale, they both said it was “jaw-dropping,” that the episode has a “compelling case,” and that there will be a “lot of action.”

Now that you’ve heard from the creators, here are a few of my own thoughts about the finale.

The hits start right from the beginning and they don’t stop.

There’s a moment that happens less than five minutes in to the show that has such ramifications that I could easily see a scene like that happening at the end and yet it basically starts the episode. After that, things go from bad to worse for the team. The amount of near-misses, injuries and life-threatening incidents is off the charts. If you are looking for a nice relaxing episode, you will not find it here.

A lot of familiar faces return

As the EP’s said above, Joe is back in this episode. But what you may not know is that he’s not the only character to return. I think it’s more fun seeing these people come up in the storyline without knowing so I’m not going to mention any names but I will say that ever familiar face that returns is vital to the overall story.

Never let your guard down

Just when you think things are quiet, or that the case is resolved, or that all the bad stuff is over – it’s not. Like never. I’m not going to say how many times new surprises come up to bite our favorite characters in the ass, but I will say it’s more than once and less than ten. My advice: don’t leave your couch during this entire episode. If you need a snack or a potty break, go during a commercial. If you go any other time, even if you think all is well, you’ll be sorry. Consider yourself warned.

So there you have it, vital information about tonight’s Hawaii Five-0 finale from the Executive Producer and Co-Executive Producer themselves, as well as my personal thoughts. Still thinking about skipping this one or leaving it on your DVR for another night?…..Yeah, I didn’t think so.