Shanola Hampton Teases Shocking Gabi and Sir Interaction, 2025 Return (Exclusive)

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Found Season 2 Episode 8 “Missing While Haunted.”]

Gabi (Shanola Hampton) is ready to fight when Found returns in 2025.

The NBC drama’s fall finale ended with Gabi going to meet Sir (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) with her brass knuckles on and his “Hello, Gabrielle,” over the intercom in the school. Meanwhile, Margaret (Kelli Williams) continues to struggle with her son missing and, when Dhan (Karan Oberoi) finds her at the beach (a happy memory for her and where, when the M&A team discussed where they considered dying by suicide due to their traumas, she would have done it), admits that she asked Jamie for a break and sent him to the end of the row of seats in the bus station the day he went missing.

Below, Hampton teases that Gabi-Sir interaction to come, what’s ahead for the members of M&A, and more.

Gabi walks into that school prepared. She has her brass knuckles. What is she expecting?

Shanola Hampton: A war, a fight. She’s going to be ready for whatever. It’s Sir, what is she not expecting? It is the survival phrase, expect the unexpected, and she’s going to be ready for anything. She’s not that timid little girl anymore and she is ready for whatever battle Sir comes with.

Matt Miller / NBC

Can you say if she has any contingencies in place that we didn’t see her set up?

No, because now she’s acting on emotion and all she sees is red. He’s touched the lives of people that she loves and so she’s not strategically thinking, she’s just ready to fight that. That raw emotion is coming out of her right now, and so he better be careful because she’ll be like a feral cat.

What can you tease about this next interaction between these two?

It’s going to be typical Sir and Gabi, but at a level that is so intense that you will be doing this like a tennis match going back and forth. Sir will present something to Gabi that will be a bit of a shock or she’ll think is not true, but then also she knows Sir always tells the truth. Something that comes out about another character that you won’t expect, which I love, and then it all ends with a bang.

That other character, is that someone from M&A?

No.

Is it Trent (Brett Dalton)?

He’s not M&A, is he? Maybe…

You touched on Sir’s interactions with the others now—Margaret, Zeke (Arlen Escarpeta). How is she feeling about that? Because she knows him so well. She knows what he can do, what he can prey on.

She’s broken. She’s really in a horrible, horrible place right now. This is exactly what she did not want. She didn’t want the people she loved to be affected by her choices and she is in a state of protection but also so broken herself and so hurt herself that it’s just to see that she has no control. The one thing about the confinement in the basement and one of the reasons why she took him was that was a space she could control. He’s out in the open, she cannot control this space anymore and that means she can’t help anyone because she doesn’t know what his next move is going to be or which family member he’s going to go to next. She’s losing her mind.

NBC

Especially because when he encountered Margaret, he was looking for Gabi and Margaret should not have been there at that time of night.

And crazy enough, that encounter was something that the audience didn’t know that they needed but wanted and craved, and just as Sir does, he was able to pivot right into, “Okay, I have something for you, too,” and say, “All those digs and aren’t you going to go look for your son at the bus station in vain?” He’s always ready. He’s always ready for whatever encounter. You never see him really shaken by what was unexpected for him and that’s what Gabi has to know when she’s walking in with brass knuckles. I have to expect anything.

Speaking of that, are we going to see him shaken at any point going forward?

I think so.

Because of Gabi?

For sure. I mean the only person that could shake him is Gabi and the actions or lack of interaction with her. Sir is going to get a little bit of what’s coming for him coming up and we’re going to see a little bit of—he gets it. He doesn’t get the go scot-free all season long, so stay tuned because we got some good things cooking,

We know that Sir is working with someone and Christian is a possibility, but we have also seen their interactions that Gabi isn’t privy to. But where does Gabi stand on Christian? Because obviously she can’t trust him, but I feel like she may also be thinking there’s more going on there…

I think she’s torn. She can see if anybody has had any sort of interaction with Sir. She knows what he can do to them mentally and really mess with them. So I think she has such a soft spot for him, but also has to look with one eye open at him because it’s still Sir’s brother and you never know what they’re going to do and they’re all able to be charismatic and make you think that they’re one thing and be something completely different. Look what Sir did to the public by saving the girl last week and coming out and saying I did that, but we all know he’s a serial kidnapper, so that could run in the family. And Gabi is lost, but she will take any risk to find him, especially because it means saving her family. And so I think she’s thinking more and him being the good guy than not.

Steve Swisher / NBC

I’m wondering about Sir’s half-sister because she is out there. What can you say about us potentially seeing her this season and what Gabi might think of her?

I don’t know. Do we even see her this season? Does she come? It’s going to be interesting to see if we even get to meet another family member of Sir’s.

Everything with Margaret in this episode broke my heart. What you tease about what’s coming up there and with the search for Jamie and how Gabi’s handling that? Gabi can’t be there for her like she wants to.

I think that you got to see Margaret say how can you find everyone else’s child and not mine? And I think that that is something that hits so deep. So we got to get into this Jamie case. We got to figure out all the things and we will.

Is that going to kind of start those first steps that Gabi and Margaret need to get back to some semblance of what they were?

Absolutely. Absolutely. You’re going to start to see more of a healing and that will be a main reason why you start seeing them, and time. And yes, you’ll start to see that relationship rebuild.

But it’s rebuilding something different. It’s never going to be what it was, but it can be something different that maybe even better in a way because there’s honesty?

Yeah, I mean, there’s honesty. You’ve gone through something, it’s a trauma bond again revisited and yeah, relationships are never the same After going through something like that. When you have essentially a breakup, you rebuild. It’s either for the better or worse. Luckily for Margaret and Gabi, it will be for the better

Because of Sir, Zeke took a step out of his house, which is just chilling to think about. What does that mean for Zeke’s journey this season? How does Gabi feel about that, that maybe Sir’s helping Zeke in a way that she can’t?

I think that she won’t see it that way because she knows what Sir’s manipulation tactics are and she just wants him to stay away from her family. That’s more of what she’s seeing. But it is nice for the audience to see him take that step, right?

Matt Miller / NBC

It was heartbreaking when his computers were taken away from him.

His whole connection to the world is taken away, and we still have the fallout of that in the coming episodes. We’ve seen Zeke break down a couple of times, he was in the hospital. It’s so heartbreaking every time it happens. And that’s what I love about the season is if we’re really getting into the other characters’ trauma and insecurities and journeys and that’s been really nice to watch as an audience.

We haven’t gotten nearly as much Gabi and Lacey (Gabrielle Walsh) as I would like this season so far. What’s coming up?

They are sisters and I think you saw that when it really shook Gabi to her core when Lacey was missing and Sir had her, again. You’ll get to see more of them building but also more of Lacey growing up and having her voice and not being as much in the shadows of Gabi and being her own person, which only builds the sisterhood.

How is Gabi handling that?

Lovely. It’s Lacey. That’s what she wants to see. She wanted her to be able to use her voice in a way because she was there when she wasn’t speaking at all. So you have to remember that this journey for them is so deep-rooted in living a whole life together before there was even an M&A. So there is nothing that Gabi wants more than for Lacey to not only reach a level but to be greater than whatever Gabi Mosely has because Lacey is the purest of pure. She could do what Gabi does, but also maintain this level of morality that Gabi walks the line.

Those flashbacks this season are so good.

So good. Who knew that he was terrorizing this girl? Isn’t it horrible?

The phone call about the “university”? Wow.

It’s crazy. It’s crazy. Yeah, I love that. I love that we get to see the story and see—it’s rare that you get to see where your characters that you’re watching on television, where they came from and the backstory. And so for us to be able to live through it with everyone I think has been really nice.

It feels like Dhan’s been holding everyone together. Is there a time coming up this season when he’s going to need the others to do the same for him?

Towards the end you’re going to see that. Yeah. I think that with the luxury of us having 22 episodes is we get to really get into other relationships and things. And what I know that NK’s [showrunner Nkechi Okoro Carroll] plan is, is to use our seasons and the luxury that NBC has given us of being able to tell these stories to tell the backstory of each character. So Dhan’s story is coming.

Things are still tense between Gabi and Trent. What is it going to take for that to change?

Who knows? Like Trent, sit down. Enough is enough. We got it. Your feelings are hurt. No, it will take time. It will take a lot of things happening, but right now Trent wants Gabi behind parts and that’s just where they are. And Gabi also wants to be behind bars, so he’s not saying anything to her to hurt her. She wants to punish herself just as badly as he wants to punish her. And that’s just where they are right now.

What else is coming up for Gabi?

You’re going to get to see more heartbreak, more fragility, and more putting her needs aside to help others, which is her mission. And just more struggle. More struggle. Confessions. all sorts of things.

What have been your favorite scenes to film?

I will tell you that my favorite scenes happen in Episode 12.

Can you share anything about a tone or anything about the situation, who you’re with?

I’m with Mark-Paul, but it was so fulfilling and I think the audience is going to love it. Sonay [Hoffman], our co-showrunner, wrote that episode, and boy did she put her foot in it. It’s so good and I like it because that was my favorite thing to shoot this season.

How much do we see you back in that basement this season going forward?

Not much, but we go back.

How do you think Gabi’s going to do once Sir is caught? Do you have any sense of how she would handle it? She’s been caught in this for so long to imagine him behind bars…

Yeah, I think that because he’s always haunting her, even if he gets caught and does go behind bars, there will always be him looming over her or trying to draw her or the people she loves back in. So I think it will be hard for her to still feel at peace if that were to happen.

Found, Returns, Thursday, January 16, 2025, 10/9c, NBC