NEXT UP IN THE RING!

Season 1 of GLOW concludes with the wrestling pilot finally airing, and co-creators Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch say the neon is just warming up. “Honestly, we take it so slow in Season 1—they’ve shot a pilot in front of an audience, but it hasn’t gone beyond that in terms of people watching,” Flahive explains. “The idea of how these characters are in the world and how that hits our women will be an interesting part of our story.” Case in point: Expect big reverberations when TV audiences actually meet the outrageous personas that Sam (Marc Maron) has bestowed upon the wrestlers. “It means one thing to play a stereotype in practice,” says Mensch. “It means another thing to play it on television.”

Out of the ring, one of the most pressing questions raised by the finale is the fragile status of the show’s central frenemyship. Debbie’s final line to Ruth before the credits roll—“we’re not there yet”—isn't how viewers expect a show to wrap up. “Just because a television season ends after 10 episodes, that doesn’t mean that that’s all water under the bridge,” says Mensch. Flahive adds, “Female friendships are very, very complicated and it’s a long road. We wanted to signal that we knew that the trauma to that friendship was deep and we’re excited to explore more.”

But don’t look to the real-life GLOW for any clues to a possible second season. “We knew pretty early we wanted to split from the original and create our own fictional version, so we’re kind of on our own,” Mensch says. “We’re definitely not going back. We’re going forward.”