Warning: This post contains spoilers for 1923‘s Season 2 finale. Proceed accordingly.
How could we have known that the elephant stampede and the shipwreck at sea would be the good times?
1923‘s Season 2 finale, aka the Yellowstone prequel’s series-ending episode, marks the long-awaited reunion of eternally beleaguered lovers Spencer and Alexandra. The fan-favorite characters have been separated since Spencer was kicked off their ship in Europe in the Season 1 finale; Season 2 has been a rough go as they pursue their individual paths to reunion. Spencer (played by Brandon Sklenar) worked on a (different) ship, ran afoul of a Texas mobster and killed hobos in a train car in order to save his own life. His pregnant wife, Alex (played by Julia Schlaepfer), navigated an unfeeling American entry process at Ellis Island, was the victim of a robbery and nearly beat a man to death who’d sexually violated her.
And that’s before the Paramount+ series got to the point where Alex’s traveling companions froze to death during a Montana blizzard, leaving her to burn whatever she could to stay alive.
Spencer and Alex do find their way back to each other in rather dramatic fashion: The train he’s on passes the car she’s lit ablaze, and he hops off the back of the locomotive and sprints over the snowy track to get to her. (You can read a more detailed recap of the moment, and of the episode overall, here.)
When I spoke with Schlaepfer and Sklenar about the finale, she said the first Season 2 scene they shot together was the one we’d — and they’d — looked forward to.
1923 season 2 finale spencer alex brandon sklenar julia schlaepfer interview
“We were filming these really difficult scenes away from each other for so much of the season, and the first scene we shot together was the reunion. I think everyone on set, the crew, Brandon and I, we all just kind of took a breath,” she says in the video above. “My director Ben [Richardson], he said to me when Spencer and I run and collide, ‘It’s almost like’ — because we had to find another level of her emotions, because she’d already been through so much — he’s like, ‘You’re a kid going to your first day of school, coming back from your first day of school, and you had a horrible day, and you see your mom.’ And I feel like that’s such a good way to put how we also felt on that day, everyone in the room. Because finally, what everyone’s been waiting for: They’re back together. And I think Brandon and I felt that.”
1923 season 2 finale spencer alex brandon sklenar julia schlaepfer interview
If you’ve watched the finale, though, you know that Spencer and Alex’s happy time together is severely limited: She dies near the end of the episode, succumbing to injuries from frostbite after giving premature birth to their son, John. The scenes are extra affecting courtesy of the very real-looking prosthetic baby, a prop that Sklenar and Schlaepfer say was something he couldn’t stop joking around with in between takes.
“It was a heavy couple of days, so it was a nice little shot of levity,” Sklenar says, laughing, after detailing what he did with the tiny Dutton. “But being the protective mama she is, she did not let me around that baby all that much.”
Press PLAY on the video above to find out exactly how cheeky Sklenar got, then hit the comments with your thoughts on Alex and Spencer’s highly anticipated, deeply heartbreaking reunion.
