Even though there is a spoiler warning literally right above this line, I’m still putting one extra spoiler warning if you haven’t seen the Person of Interest series finale ( read Matt Fowler's review of the finale here ). Okay, let’s go!

After five years and 103 episodes, the story of Team Machine has come to an end, with tragedy and triumph occurring along the way. I spoke to POI executive producers Jonathan Nolan and Greg Plageman about the big events in the final episode, including the death of John Reese, how they decided on what would occur and more – including what we can infer the future holds for the surviving characters.

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Well, we heard crickets from the network. [Laughs] Yeah, that was a fun notes call, when we submitted that cut [of the finale] and they were like, "Oh, uh, yeah! Okay, cool." So, look, for us, demonstrably, clearly, we've never wanted to be the show that just kept things exactly the same for better or for worse. You can imagine the 300-episode version of Person of Interest where Reese gets to rescue someone's cat out of a f**king tree and nothing ever changes."Look! It's Mark Harmon in the tree!"Yeah, and Root and Shaw flirting for f**king 250 episodes until one of them f**k up the contract renegotiations so that they disappear. It's like, "No, no, no. We don't want to do any of this s**t. We want to tell a complete story." It's a real gift. Look, we're very sad the show is ending. I think we had a couple seasons left of good material there, but I'm so proud of what we've done and so f**king thrilled that we got a chance to complete the story. And part of that story was Root becomes a god and Finch has told Reese from the beginning that they're not going to make it, and so implicit in that its, well, f**k, both these guys aren't going to make it. Two things... You want Root to have some company -- Root and Elias and everyone else -- to have some company in the afterlife. But it's also, just given the stakes and the f**king risks that these guys have taken, it would be bulls**t for all of them to have a happy ending. That would mean that all of the happy endings were meaningless, right? So for us it always felt like this erstwhile… You know, you're fairly convinced Finch is going to die because he's taken responsibility for this. He wants to be the one who bears it away, who sort of jumps on the grenade. But this relationship between Reese and Finch, from the beginning, has been so beautiful to write, and it's a slow burn, with these two great actors, this kind of odd couple. And what Finch has given to Reese and what Reese has tried to give back in return, is very moving to me. And the opportunity for Reese to repay that, as he says in the beginning of the episode, pay it back all at once, for me and for Greg I think, was just the most moving version of how this story ended. And yeah, it would just be bulls**t if they all made it out intact. What they've been doing is fighting against impossible odds. It would rob the ending of all meaning if it was happy endings all around.Only one person gets a happy ending.I think Jonah wrote it in the very first lines of the pilot, with the voiceover and Reese on the train… When you lose that one person in the world, what do you become then? It sort of set the tone for the entire show. All these characters have lost someone or pushed someone away very close to them because of what they do or because of what they know or what they created. It's sort of the tragedy of each of these characters. Harold Finch, who's a person who's been on the run since he was a teenager, who has adopted every alias under the sun named after a bird, has never been a man who's been able to live in his own skin. To finally have made that one connection with somebody, and then pushed her away, it felt so right. It felt so poetic that he would be the one in the end and that Reese would give him that license by sacrificing himself to allow Harold to have that life.Yeah, and to further Greg's point, these are two very broken guys who have given up an awful lot of life. One of the things we explored with Reese was, is the possibility of a happy ending there? And the bittersweet answer was, not really. We saw him try to engage in a normal relationship, but it's just not the path he's on. Whereas for Finch, there was a chance there. There was a chance for happiness. So that's how our story ends.And that's Reese's last gift to him.[Laughs] Never let it be said that we passed up an opportunity to f**k with our audience.We just wanted to be clear that there was going to be no Person of Interest: Beyond Borders.[Laughs] "It's not just New York!"Cut to a payphone ringing in the Congo.Yeah, we're sneaky little f**ks like that, aren't we?Yeah, you wanted to get a sense that it all added up to something. I think a lingering question for the audience has always been, "Well, what happens if a social security number comes up that's not in the 212 area code?" And we kind of figured if Sam Esmail can pay homage to Fight Club throughout an entire season of television, then we could pay off one moment... That sounds like a criticism of Mr. Robot, and I love Mr. Robot! But playing in the Fight Club homage camp of having a little moment where you realize that your little private endeavor has gone kind of broadband. The sense that the mission continues, we talked about that idea for an awfully long time. You don't want to reduce the specialness of our characters. You don't want to f**k with that. But you also don't want to imagine that the mission is over, that the Machine has never… There’s that amazing moment in Her when Joaquin Phoenix's character finally asks Scarlett Johansson, "Wait, how many people are you having these sorts of conversations with? How many people are you in love with?" and she says, "564," and you kind of go, "Oh, f**king AI is different." It's different. And of course it's not going to be content to just save people in the tristate area. So it's kind of one of those moments for us. We're going to honor the story you've been watching but suggest that, yeah, there is complexity beyond them.[Laughs] Yeah, that guy in Rhode Island is f**ked.I think Greg just wanted to kill off my uncle, which is f**ked up.[Laughs] He's still blaming me, Eric. He's still blaming me. John Nolan, every day on the set, kept waiting for the call from the governor, but it didn't come in, unfortunately. But I don't think it was necessary for Greer to survive into the finale, because he had always operated at the service of his master, which was Samaritan. It's far surpassed him in terms of its capacity. It didn't need him anymore. I thought it was always appropriate that when Greer died that Harold Finch should be present. These were the two masterminds of the two ASIs. And that Greer, going out, chose to sacrifice himself believing he was taking out Harold Finch and, you know, the Queen sacrifice in that room, and believe that the loss of his life would mean something, that it would lead to a Samaritan world, and that was entirely appropriate.

Continue on as Nolan and Plageman discuss Root appearing during Reese’s death scene and more about the ending of Person of Interest.