THE first season of HBO’s star-filled drama Big Little Lies is now over, with a thrilling finale airing in the US and in Australia yesterday.

Without giving too much away for those who have yet to see it, viewers finally got an answer to the murder mystery set up in the opening moments of the show, some seven episodes earlier.

But the final seconds of the episode were open-ended, suggesting there are more tales of domestic deceit to be found among this group of well-heeled women in the sleepy seaside town of Monterey, California.

Big Little Lies fans might be hopeful there’s more to come — but the show’s director, Jean-Marc Vallee, has poured cold water on talk of a second season, insisting the show, adapted from Australian author Liane Moriarty’s 2014 novel of the same name, shouldn’t venture into new stories.

“Now it’s up to the audience and their imagination to figure out,” he said of the tantalisingly open-ended finale.

“To do a season two, I’m not for it. Let’s move on and do something else! If there’s an opportunity to reunite with Reese, Nicole and these characters of course, I’ll be a part of it, but Big Little Lies One is a one-time deal. Big Little Lies Two? Nah. The end is for the audience to talk about. Imagine what you want to imagine and that’s it. We won’t give you a season two because it’s so good like this. Why spoil it?” he told the Hollywood Reporter.

With big screen actors including Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman and Laura Dern in key roles, the series has been a critic’s favourite — and a ratings hit. Kidman and Witherspoon both served as executive producers on the show, and both have kept a more open approach to a second season in recent days as fans have pleaded for another instalment.

“One of the main questions everyone keeps asking us is there going to be a season two,” Witherspoon said in a Facebook Live chat to fans this week. “We’ve been talking with the writer, and you guys should Facebook Liane Moriarty and tell her how much you want to see Big Little Lies 2. That would be good. She’s thinking about ideas, and so we would love to hear ideas.”

Kidman, who made headlines throughout the season due to her character’s explicit and confronting scenes of sex and violence while stuck in an abusive marriage, said she’d also be open to returning for another season.

“I think if there was something compelling and extraordinary that they could come up with, then would we want to go and embody these women again?” she said.

But there’s certainly nothing [about Season 2] now, nothing that’s solid or anything. I mean, it was a lot to get it to this point! [Laughs] There are so many moving parts to this series that would be impossible not to have again. And who knows if it’s meant to be finite?”