The series title be damned: The Killing has had several lives, getting canceled after Season 2 on AMC only to be brought back for a third season on the cable network, canceled again, and brought back for one more — and this time, everyone agrees, just one more — season, wrapping up the series on Netflix in August.

But four seasons are enough for series creator Veena Sud to tell the story she wanted to tell, right down to the final scene she had planned from the beginning for star Mireille Enos's Sarah Linden. Sud, who was nominated for Emmy and Writers Guild awards for The Killing, talked to Yahoo TV about how lovely it is to end the show on Netflix (hint: cursing is involved), shared details of the incredibly tension-filled six episodes that will wrap up, she promises, all the series' storylines, and expressed how grateful she is that, despite all those cancellations, she gets to end The Killing exactly the way she wanted to.

How has the move to Netflix changed the series? The episodes in this final season will be longer, for one, without the commercials?

There are so many great things for us, in terms of being on Netflix. Definitely, we have more real estate for episodes… we've got more than 15 minutes [extra], for each episode. Each episode runs close to a full hour, which is wonderful as storytellers, and it also just completely serves a story like The Killing, that's so compacted and rich and deep… having that full hour has been so wonderful.



[Related: ‘The Killing’ Season 4 Poster: Linden Considers Her Dreary Options]

And the other nice thing, that [series co-star] Joel Kinnaman really loves, as did all the writers, is that we can cuss on this [laughs]. And it does feel right, for this world, and the place that Linden and Holder find themselves in the kind of endgame of the series. So there are F-bombs here and there, and even Linden gets one off, which feels really right and real for this world.

Why just six episodes?

Six felt like a perfect number for wrapping everything up. This season, Linden and Holder are dealing with the fallout from what happened at the end of Season 3, we've got the new case, and we're answering every hanging thread in the series, like what will happen to Jack and [his mom] Sarah, does Sarah ever meet her mother [which she does this season]… there's a lot of stuff compacted in each episode. But [six] still felt like the right number, because, again, we've got those extra 15 minutes in each one, so it's basically de facto eight episodes in terms of storytelling real estate.



Joan Allen in a scene from Netflix's 'The Killing' More

What can you share about the new murder investigation Linden and Holder will be working on? Does it involve the character played by new Season 4 regular Joan Allen?

They're assigned a new case this season. A picture-perfect family is murdered in a wealthy part of Seattle, and the family is survived only by their military academy [student] son, who was shot in the head but survived the home-invasion-type assault. And he goes to an all-male military academy that is run by a woman named Col. Margaret Rayne, who is played by the fabulous Joan Allen. As the investigation proceeds and the mystery thickens, there is a lot of head-butting between Rayne and Linden, so there's a lot of heightened, confrontational, delicious moments between these two women who live in worlds traditionally occupied by men. They are incredibly fierce. So we get to see the great Mireille Enos and the fabulous Joan Allen go head-to-head, which is a wonderful dynamic.

