What things do I want to answer that the fans want to know? If I was a fan, what would I hate to leave unanswered?Blackman had been trying to get “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves” by Cher for years and she had said no to him many, many times.

He’s just a big fan.

He thinks she’s just phenomenal.

Culturally, she’s everywhere in the zeitgeist for four decades now, and this time she said yes.

Blackman was like, “Are you sure we could have the song?” She’s like, “Yes, go for it.

” So it was so exciting to get that song, and it worked really well in the moment with Jean and Gene.

There were quite a few.

There were some songs—from the seventies—that they thought for sure the artists would say yes.

They said, “No, we don’t allow use of the songs.

” There were a few things by other famous people and they said no, too.

Blackman didn’t realize until he got much more into it that it is a thing.

A lot of people are very specific about where they want their songs used or not used.

He was very respectful of that.

But even Adele, getting her to do “Hello” in season three, the Swedish version, was a hard get.

It was only when Blackman explained to her that this young woman from Sweden who’s trying to get a career sang it that she changed her mind and said they could use it.

They don’t say no automatically, so you have to work for it sometimes.

They got lucky with a few songs this year.

Yes, the Tokyo subway system was very confusing to Blackman when he looked at it, and he thought, “Let’s take that to the extreme.

” Ultimately, Five finds the cipher in episode five, which explains how that works, but without the cipher, it’s just impossible—although Lila thinks she can figure it out.

But it’s taken to the absurd of what a subway system could be like.

If you have unlimited timelines, Blackman supposes that’s what the subway system looks like, right? It was a lot of fun.

Blackman sat down with the writers and they joked about where they would be.

They knew Luther would not be able to have a stable job because he’s a bit of a man-child.

They always thought that would be the one who would probably be most OK with living an “ordinary life,” despite unresolved issues with dad.

Then with Diego and Lila, it made sense that they were going to try being a domesticated thing.

How would that work for them? Children are a complication, so it just fell into place quite easily and they all agreed on those things as writers, and they all played out really well.

Blackman has no regrets about what each of them ended up doing.

He gave them a lot of leeway on that.

They wanted just for the fans to show some really interesting extensions of powers so it wouldn’t feel too derivative.

The logic was they never took Marigold that fast.

That shot of Marigold was like an overdose of Marigold, so things were not going to happen the way they expected.

Blackman wanted to have fun with the storytelling, so he thinks it evolved from the storytelling what their powers would be.

Blackman knew very early on, almost in season one, and he didn’t see it as killing them.

He thought there was an interesting idea of ceasing to exist, to never have been known.

What is a superhero if no one knows you exist? That was the philosophical question.

Can you be a superhero if no one ever knew you were a superhero? What does it mean to them? And he also thought it was an incredible sacrifice.

He hates to say it, but maybe it’s worse than being dead.

If you never existed, what does that mean? Does anything in your life have any meaning? It’s not that you lived and died—you never lived.

He thought it was a very powerful concept to play with non-existence as opposed to just dying.

So in his mind, they never existed.

They didn’t die.

They just ceased to exist.

They never were.

And, what does that mean? It didn’t seem right for them to bring their families down that road with them.

Blackman felt the families had to survive because they were good parents and they all loved their kids; those aunts and uncles and moms and dads and everything else.

He didn’t want them to die.

Then they had this device of the subway, which allowed them within the logic