‘Colin From Accounts’ Creator Harriet Dyer Breaks Down Ashley and Gordon’s Season 3 Ending (Exclusive)

Colin From Accounts has come to an end as Season 3 lands on Paramount+, but how did Ashley (Harriet Dyer) and Gordon’s (Patrick Brammall) story conclude? Warning: Spoilers for Colin From Accounts Season 3 ahead!

As fans may recall, Gordon awkwardly proposed to Ashley at her best friend’s wedding, leading to an even more awkward rejection. Cut to: Season 3 picks up three years in the future, and the duo are no longer together. But when a doctor’s office visit forces Ashley and Gordon to cross paths, unresolved feelings bubble to the surface.

While they’re both in long-term relationships with other people, Ashley with David (Thomas Cocquerel) and Gordon with Chelsea (Nikki Shiels), the undeniable chemistry between Ashley and Gordon can’t be overcome, leading to a reevaluation of the separate lives they’d been leading. Ultimately, break-ups ensue with their current partners, Gordon’s fracture due in part to Chelsea learning Gordon and Ashley shared a secret kiss at his birthday party she’d helped organize.

Meanwhile, Ashley broke off things with David when she realized he was going to propose, but not soon enough to escape a prepaid hot air balloon ride. Despite the lingering feelings between Ashley and Gordon, their path forward wasn’t a sure bet and much of Season 3 leaves them questioning whether they will get back together.

John Platt / Paramount+

In the end, they choose to give their connection a real shot as they reunite their little family, titular dog Colin included. Below, Dyer opens up about saying goodbye to the series, which she co-created with her costar and real-life husband, Patrick Brammall.

Season 3 picks up three years in the future after Gordon and Ashley have moved on with their lives separately. What made that the perfect time for them to reencounter one another?

Harriet Dyer: It was a funny thing. [Ashley’s] 29 in the pilot, right? And that first season was maybe three weeks, and I think Season 2 started like two months later, but basically Season 1 and 2 in real time occupied probably five years of our life, from writing and production, but for four months of their life, and so we just wanted to jump ahead a bit.

We thought it would be interesting to pull them apart, and have them collide again in a way that was unexpected to both of them — they’ve moved on — and then have the audience play catch-up. I also quite like a show where it doesn’t explain it all and the audience is trying to figure it out. So, that’s kind of fun. Also, if we want to call it a rom-com, which we never really set out to make, it’s a will-they-won’t-they again.

Does Ashley consciously avoid telling Gordon she’s back in the area after spending time away, or was that unintended?

I think she was kind of scared. She had moved on to this next person who was so right on paper. Also, by the time she meets up with Gordon again, Ashley and David have been together for two and a half years, which is so significant, especially considering Gordon and her were only together a handful of months. I like the dichotomy of that, like, well, time with a person must equal stability and must equal more love for a person, but it’s not. She kind of couldn’t get him out of her head, and also the practicality of David being allergic to dogs was a little bit too hard.

John Platt / Paramount+

I also like to think that maybe Gordon pushed it a bit when she left, and that it was messy, like she had to block him [on social media] or something, not that we unpacked that so much, but that it wasn’t amicable, that it was a bit of a s**t show. He kind of dropped his bundle a bit after they split, and so I don’t think she was expecting him to be as put together as he was. I don’t think she was expecting this man to walk into her [office] doing really well, and he’s really fricking cute still, damn it, you know.

Is that part of what makes things so terrifying with Gordon, that despite their lack of time together, Ashley can still be drawn to Gordon like a magnet? 

Yeah, I think she is scared, and that’s why they’re denying it; they’re trying to. As he said, we’ve got a monster under the bed here, we’ve gotta pull it out and try and light it. I think they genuinely think that maybe they can decimate it by bringing it out into the light, taking the taboo out of it. It’s back in the real world, but I think their connection does frighten her because he isn’t perfect; he doesn’t have his s**t together. But nor is he a fixer-upper, and she’s not that kind of woman; I don’t think she’s invested in that. I think their connection is something that scares them both, and that’s why they keep getting in their own way and running away a little bit.

Season 3 marks the end of the show, but that was always the plan. How do you feel about Ashley and Gordon’s end now that the show’s over? 

I’m so entwined with it as a person in my life that I selfishly think about Harriet’s end of it more than Ashley’s. There are a few big moments I remember when I sent my final first draft, and I thought, oh f**k, I’ll never write the show again, and I had a tear. I remember when we shot the very last scene of the show — it wasn’t on the last day, and it was kind of weirdly in the first half of the shoot, and that was emotional. And then the last day was hugely emotional, because we had some crazy day where we had to do lots of scenes in a car, and we all started to lose our minds… We were just in one spot, it was really hot, and we had about fourteen pages to shoot, and so the hardness of the day helped it not be as sentimental, but I still really cried.

John Platt / Paramount+

It still makes me emotional when they said, “That’s a wrap on Colin From Accounts.” I really did drop my bundle a bit, and then for the final time when we left the editing suite, which was a good 10, 11 weeks in the edit — we had this final last thing we had to do, which we were supposed to leave the day before, but then we wanted to fix one more little thing, we’re always tinkering… and then Patty had to do something else, and he was gone, and then Dan [Boesenberg], the editor… she just started packing up all the snacks, and then she was like, “Are you gonna stay?” And I said, I think I just need to sit here, and I stayed in the edit suite… I think I just didn’t want to leave.

Everything was sentimental, and I had a little weep all the way home because I do know it’s the end. However, Patty and I are still together. Do you know what I mean? They’re alive. We have our marriage, we have our life; there is no real death. We will continue to write together, and I don’t think I’ll feel it fully until the finale comes out. I will feel it. I’ll feel it, the response of people watching. I’ll go, “There it is, time of death.”

Ashley breaks up with David moments before he intends to propose on a hot air balloon. Did you film that practically? 

I know it’s wild. Because it’s shot at sunrise, and [no one] wanted to wake up at 2 a.m., we shot it in reverse. So everything was shot backwards so that we ended with the dawn, but that was actually sunset. It was military precision between my sister, who directed it, and our DP, [who was] heavily pregnant with twins. Everyone was just on a track, and when the sun went down and we finally got everything in the right order, everyone breathed a sigh of relief. The actual lifting of the basket was actually a camera guy bending down, so we never left the ground. We were in a basket with a balloon, and he just kept squatting as far as his poor 45-year-old knees would let him.

Another day, we shot a proper air balloon with what we call the Temu cast. If you squinted, they were us in our costumes, but it’s not. My sister shot that properly with drones, so it was practical, but Harri, Tom Cocquerel, and the wonderful guy who played the pilot were not flying. I think I’m kind of afraid of heights.

I don’t think I’d want to be up in the air with a basket connected to open flames.

I was relieved when they said, “We’ll get all the big s**t with stand-ins.” But I’ve also come to realize that whatever I write, I have to back up. There is a scene in Episode 6 where I interact with an arachnid. I am not that guy, but I knew I had to, because I agreed to it and I put it in there, so it was kind of the hardest thing I’ve ever done, acting-wise.

Colin From Accounts, Season 3, Streaming now, Paramount+