The eighth episode of Smoke on Apple TV+ has left fans reeling over the shocking development between Jurnee Smollett’s Michelle Calderone and Rafe Spall’s Captain Steven Burk.

The episode found Dave Gudsen (Taron Egerton) and Calderone (Smollett), his investigating partner, having a spat after Calderone called him out for being an arson investigator who is also an arsonist creating his own cases. The two try to cool off at their respective exes’ places. Calderone heads to ex and superior, Burk (Spall), and they relive their glory days together a bit, including kissing. But Calderone calls it off.

Burk, who has been wanting to get back together with Calderone, flies into anger at the rejection and threatens to keep Calderone forever. When Burk tries to stop Calderone from leaving, Calderone punches him in the throat. The punch is so forceful that it damages his airway, and Burk starts suffocating. He tries to get Calderone to open his airway with a pen, but instead of helping, she just looks at him until he dies.

Calderone begins to break down over what just happened. But not for long; she quickly starts disinfecting the house and sets fire to it using the same type of device Gudsen uses for his arsons. She burns the house and ties Gudsen to the scene of the crime by using his gloves, putting his DNA around the house.

Cast and creator react to the shocking moment

Smollett, Spall and creator Dennis Lehane spoke to Blavity’s Shadow and Act about the twist, with Smollett describing her character’s actions as part of her “trauma response.”

“Someone like Michelle who has [her] situation, her backstory with her mother, she’s obviously a very broken person, a very flawed person, and as we see, she has a pattern of doing things before she thinks, and panicking and honestly just doing whatever the next step is to survive,” said Smollett. “She just operates in survival mode.”

“And so I think in that moment, he [Burk] has been a weight on her chest. And it’s odd because he loves her. She loves him. They have this really toxic dynamic where he’s her boss and he punishes her because he leaves his wife for her. And that level of intimacy is not something she is capable of committing to, you know?” she continued. “I mean, she is that avoidant person where it’s like, the second you get close to someone, she’s gonna pull away. And so they’ve been in this toxic dynamic. So when that happens, what I feel and what I felt in that moment was all the different layers of it, of allowing it is also a release for her because the weight of this case is because of him.”

Spall said he knew his character’s ending was coming because he hadn’t been optioned for a second season. “So,” he said, “I knew that I was gonna go in some way, and actually, Dennis had pitched it when I spoke to him about it. I didn’t know that it would be getting punched in the throat and then suffocating. That was pretty dramatic and something that I’ve not seen before.”

“If that goes into a court of law, that’s murder. You know, she doesn’t help him,” he continued. “She punches him in the throat and then she has the opportunity to help him, and she chooses not to. She chooses to let him die, which is murder. Now, that’s pretty radical to have your lead character do this. Now, is it justifiable? This is a guy who, in the few scenes previously, had been talking about his love for his kid and about how much he loves his family. He may be a morally questionable character, but he’s a father of two people and so how the characters reconcile themselves with these issues and how the audience then, in turn, do, I think, is what makes this show a pleasurable watching experience.”

Spall also said that he feels like his character would have acted on his threats to Calderone.

“You know, the whole reason she’s working on this desk in the first place with Dave Gudsen is because he didn’t want her around anymore,” he said. “I think he probably would’ve, but it comes from a place of pain and hurt. Hurt people hurt people. It doesn’t excuse it, but I think he probably would have followed through. I think he’s desperately in love with her and was trying to do whatever he could to keep her.”

Lehane’s inspiration for ‘Smoke’ and its themes

Lehane described what his thought process was in creating the series, which is inspired by real events.

“I’m very interested in fire. I was very interested in a sort of emotional force [and] a psychological force. What is fire? What does it do to people?” he said. “And then I was interested in this idea of the sort of victimization ego [and] narcissistic victimization complex that I see a lot, particularly in white males. I wanted to look at that.”

“I [also] wanted to look at this theory I’ve been playing with for a while, which is people say they want happiness, but that’s not true. People don’t want happiness. People want to feel alive. That’s what they want,” he continued. “And to feel alive, you’re willing to risk a lot, you’re willing to climb a mountain, you’re willing to cross an ocean just to feel alive. And I thought what if everybody in this show is a little bit addicted to things that can kill them? And that became another prism.”

Smoke is now streaming on Apple TV+.