Warning: This post contains spoilers for the 1923 season 2 finale.
Brandon Sklenar was, in his words, “a f—— mess” filming the 1923 series finale.
Ahead of the Yellowstone prequel series’ finale on April 6, Sklenar, 34, who plays war hero-turned-game hunter Spencer Dutton, and Julia Schlaepfer, who plays his fearless wife, Alex, sat down with PEOPLE to break down the devastating conclusion to their characters’ love story.
“I was super emotional. I think I was probably too emotional most of the time, genuinely,” Sklenar says of the gut-wrenching sequence that saw Alex sacrifice her own life to save her and Spencer’s baby — a son she named John in honor of Spencer’s brother.
Before that devastating moment, though, Alex and Spencer finally got their long-awaited reunion, when Spencer jumped off a moving train to rescue her from the Wyoming elements. Alex then stayed onboard the train to seek medical attention for her frostbite in Bozeman, while a shoot-out ensued at the Livingston train station. Spencer’s uncle Jacob (Harrison Ford) and the sheriff had been waiting for him, along with several of Whitfield’s (Timothy Dalton) cronies, who were hoping to take Spencer out before he could get home to defended his family’s ranch.
After his winding journey across the world ended successfully and he reunited with his aunt Cara (Helen Mirren), Spencer rushed immediately to the hospital in Bozeman to be by his wife’s side, only to find out she was succumbing to complications from her frostbite and was hours from death.
Harrison Ford as Jacob Dutton and Robert Patrick as Sheriff McDowell in ‘1923’. Trae Patton/Paramount+
“When she actually dies, when she’s telling me, ‘I can’t imagine [not] running through fields,’ I was a f—— mess,” Sklenar says. “I mean, I’m a snotty crier, so it’s not pretty. It’s ugly, and there’s a lot of snot coming down, so it’s a whole thing.”
Schlaepfer, 30, tells PEOPLE she knows “people are going to be so upset” at Alex’s death “because she does suffer so much” throughout the season, but she notes, “I think her ultimate sacrifice at the end, in giving her life, just shows how strong she is. And you know, it’s such a testament to who she is — and she’s still cracking jokes.”
The banter was part of what got Sklenar too, he says, as he repeats back Alex’s line, “‘If he’s anything like me, he’ll be a terrible child.’ You’re just like, ‘Oh my God.'”
Schlaepfer calls them the “best last words ever” and Sklenar begins to tear up thinking about his character’s final moments with his wife, whose entire journey this season has been “so f—— brutal.”
“It f—- me up, man,” he says, wiping a tear from his eye. “It still f—- me up.”
Julia Schlaepfer as Alexandra in ‘1923’ season 2. Lauren Smith/Paramount+
When Spencer wakes up in the morning beside Alex’s dead body — and she’s still cradling their newborn son — Sklenar says his stoicism is from “the shock of it all actually being for real.”
“I was hesitating to feel her cheek because he knows that she’s gone and the second he puts his hand there, it’s going to confirm it. And I definitely lost my s— on a few takes, but we wanted him to sort of feel like a little boy — like a lost child. Not a sad man necessarily, but just like a little boy who doesn’t know what to do because he’s so stripped away and shocked.”
The shock, though, “quickly gives way to, ‘I’m going to kill this fucking guy,'” he says, referring to how quickly Spencer got up, recruited Jacob and paid Whitfield a long overdue visit.
There wasn’t necessarily much shock for Schlaepfer, though, when it came to Alex’s fate.
“I think there’s a point earlier than everybody else that she knows,” Schlaepfer says. “And I think also she makes a choice, you know? She makes a choice for her family and for her baby. And she’s going to spend the remaining minutes, seconds, hours of her life that she has making sure her baby stays alive, even if that means she doesn’t … Oh gosh, it’s horrible, isn’t it?”
Brandon Sklenar as Spencer Dutton in season 2 of ‘1923’. Lo Smith/Paramount+
After Alex and Spencer’s final moments, things happened pretty swiftly. Spencer made Whitfield repeat Alex’s name back to him just before delivering the final bullet to kill him, and as he and Jacob left the villain’s mansion, it was ablaze.
Spencer’s story ended with a voiceover by his sister, 1883‘s Elsa (Isabel May), who has narrated the whole series. After Alex’s death, Spencer never remarried, but he did welcome another son with a fellow widow, and he ran the Dutton ranch he’d saved until his own death, 45 years after Alex’s.
Though Spencer and Alex didn’t get their happily ever after in real life, the series concluded with one last dance for the lovebirds as they reunited in heaven, with Alex quipping that it took her husband “long enough” to join her in the afterlife.
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The series finale of 1923 is now streaming on Paramount+.
