Eva Santos Is Mickey’s Mom

Just when you think “Sheriff Country” will zig, it zags: After a big reveal in last week’s penultimate episode, Friday’s Season 1 finale somehow managed to deliver the mother of all twists. 

After the audience found out in Episode 19 that Sheriff Mickey’s love interest DEA Agent Alec Kane was a dirty cop after he killed Rick in cold blood, Mickey soon follows suit. After noticing her new boyfriend cozying up with Miranda, she begins to notice how Alec continuously tries to steer the sheriff’s investigation into Rick’s murder off course. 

Mickey ultimately confronts Alec, accusing him of killing Rick, and Alec doesn’t protest. In fact, he admits to being Miranda’s clean-up guy and reveals he also orchestrated a set-up for the supposed killer of Skye’s former boyfriend Brandon. Alec had planted a knife to frame a local drug dealer in order to protect the true killer, Miranda’s son Rick. Alec — twisted as he is — frames all his dirty tricks as romantic acts of service for Mickey, and professes his love and begs her to run away with him. 

Mickey refuses, and shots are fired as Boone and FBI Deputy Director Eva Santos storm the scene. Alec is ultimately injured and falls to the ground, but he is still alive. He reaches for a gun tucked in his sock, and Eva shoots him dead in the head. (Boone also suffers a gunshot wound, but he survives and gets treated at the hospital.)

Though the shoot-out was fit for a finale ending, the drama continues. Eva later sits down with Mickey, debriefing the entire ordeal, and says the FBI has set their sights on a new mission: She wants to team up with the Edgewater sheriff’s office to take down a violent cartel beginning to gain traction in the town. The only catch? They’ll need help from the inside. Mickey’s father Wes has already agreed to work as an undercover informant. Mickey at first refuses to work with her father, believing he is too unreliable for the job, but Eva blackmails her, threatening to out Mickey’s relationship with the murderous Alec Kane.

Once Mickey appears to accept defeat, realizing she’s being forced into this new project whether she likes it or not, Eva calls Wes into her office. As he enters the room, the whole energy shifts, and the man appears to be on the verge of tears. And then we’re hit with a twist: Eva is Mickey’s mother, aka Maria, Wes’ ex-wife who was previously believed to be dead. (!)

Keep scrolling to read our Q&A with executive producer Matt Lopez, who unpacks the big reveal, teases where Season 2 will pick up, and talks a potential Mickey/Boone romance to come.

TVLINE | In the final moments of the finale, before the big reveal, Eva Santos tells Mickey that she’s familiar with sacrificing the people she loves for a job. Can you talk about what caused Eva to sacrifice her life with Wes and Mickey? What’s her backstory? 
MATT LOPEZ | In the first episode of Season 2, we obviously have some stuff to unpack. What we will learn is that Santos, years and years before, was sent undercover to basically try and report on Wes, and ended up falling for him. Starting in [Episode] 17, 18, and 19, there are all these breadcrumbs: Wes goes to the grave of Maria, and Mickey tells Luna, one of the co-op members, her origin story of how her mother and father were arrested and how her mother died in prison while awaiting trial. In the first episode of Season 2, the audience will discover how Mickey’s understanding of those events differs from what actually happened, and there are some really juicy twists and turns along the way.

TVLINE | Will Season 2 pick up directly where Season 1 left off?
There’s a little bit of a time jump, and then there’s a fun reveal about what happened in the moments we missed. Without giving anything away, we find Mickey very much dealing with the aftershocks.

TVLINE | When Season 1 ends, Mickey and Wes are not in a good place. How will this big reveal affect their relationship?
They are both shocked. I think it probably goes a little too far to say that all is well — just because an arguably even worse parent has suddenly bombed her way into Mickey’s life, it doesn’t mean all is forgiven with Wes. But, the three of them will work together. Eva is going to become Wes’ handler, and the three of them are going to try and take down this cartel together, and in the process, deal with a lot of ghosts and family drama.

TVLINE | Eva sort of blackmails Mickey into working with her by threatening to reveal that the town sheriff had been dating a murderer. What does that say about the kind of person Eva is? Is she looking to be a mother figure to Mickey?
We’ll find out that she’s really complex, and what Mickey will discover is they actually have a lot of similarities. They are both highly driven. They are both highly intelligent. They are both committed to protecting the public and getting justice. It won’t happen immediately, but over time, Mickey will be forced to reassess certain assumptions she’s made about her mother and what led to her mother’s fateful decision, all those years ago, to basically turn her back on Wes and her daughter.

TVLINE | Is Eva’s proposal to take down the cartel together a real job that needs to be done, or is it simply a means to reunite with her family?
We’ll unpack that in Season 2. Eva’s decision that she made all those years ago is something that she’s very much had to live with, and she’s at a stage in her life — and in her career — where she’s reexamining that choice and everything it cost her. We will come to understand why Eva thought she was doing the best thing for her kid. She’s curious about her daughter. She’s curious about her granddaughter — she’s never met Skye before. We’ll see her and Skye cross paths, and she’s at a stage in her life where she’s hoping to salvage something of a relationship with Mickey.

TVLINE | Why did Eva wait to have this big reveal in person with Wes? Why didn’t she tell him while making him the offer to be an undercover informant? Did she think he wouldn’t recognize her?
She knows that he will instantly recognize her, which he does. As soon as he walks in, his jaw drops. She knows if he were to find out that Eva were the one behind this offer to take down the cartel with Mickey, he would immediately realize that she perpetrated this horrible betrayal on him — and we’ll get into the details of why he thinks, why the world thinks, she’s dead. She knew she had to wait until she had them both in a room, and then it’s like a little bit of a surprise.

TVLINE | To shift gears, Mickey and Alec have their final showdown, and he ends up getting murdered. Were the feelings between them real? In their last moments together, they each say it was real, but with someone like Alec, I don’t know what to believe.
I do believe it was real. Their love in both directions was real. The difference is that in his kind of twisted mind, Alec was willing to take it to an extreme. I think it’s kind of a fun and a very true and emotionally real thing, when your heroes and your villains actually have similar motivations. What sets them apart is not what they’re hoping to do, but the lengths that they’re willing to go in order to achieve. And that’s certainly the case with Alec. One of the fun things we’ll play [in Season 2] is that Mickey and Eva both have a history of not letting the greatest men in the world in their lives.

TVLINE | Later, Mickey visits Boone in the hospital, and before she leaves, she kind of looks back at him once more with this longing look. What’s going through her head there, and might these two get together in a real way in Season 2?
In Episode 19, she comes to this near confession where she says, “I’d be lying if I said back when we were both deputies, I never…,” and she kind of trails off. Clearly, it’s her way of confessing that there were some feelings there. At the end of Episode 20, that look back, I think it’s Mickey wondering, “Did I just basically walk past a piece of gold to pick up a piece of coal?” She chose Alec when Boone confessed his love for her, and that was not the greatest decision of all time. We are going to continue to explore the feelings that they both have for each other, but now it might actually be a little more on the Mickey side. Mickey may have to reckon with the fact that there was a door open for a split second, there was an opportunity, and now she may have to ask herself, “Has it closed?”

TVLINE | We know that Amanda Arcuri and Ian Quinlan have been upped to series regulars in Season 2. What’s next for both Skye and Hank?
I’ll take Hank first. Hank and Cassidy in Season 1 clearly established a great rapport, so we will continue to deepen that. There’s also this kind of Mickey, Boone, and Cassidy inner circle. Ever since our midseason finale, they have this kind of unbreakable bond, and we’ll see Hank struggling a little bit on the outside looking in.

In Skye’s case, she’s going to start the season with her father, Travis, desperately trying to salvage Fraley Horizons — and it won’t be easy because Miranda has made a real mess of things. The company is under investigation, so she’s going to be struggling with that. She also has a grandmother that she never knew existed, and how does she feel about that? She’s really upset on behalf of her mother, so we’ll have a nice multigenerational journey for Eva, Mickey, and Skye to take together.

What did you think of the big Season 1 finale twist, revealing that Eva is Mickey’s mother? Will you be back for more “Sheriff Country”? Grade the episode — and Season 1 overall — in the polls below, then sound off in the comments!