He begins Final Space as a drifter (very literally in his case), a dreamer who’s underestimated by everyone around him, not least of all himself. Over the course of the show’s run, as the stakes rise and Gary begins to grapple with ideas of damage, darkness and destiny, he slowly matures into a daring and dependable hero, painted in complex shades of dark and light. He’s still a big-hearted, big-mouthed joker, but one who’s much greater, and richer, than the sum of his parts.
Arguably, then, Final Space follows the same tonal trajectory as The Orville, beginning its first season as something more akin to pure comedy, albeit one with dark moments of drama, and then wrangling with the yin and yang of that before settling into a third season that’s first and foremost dark, dramatic and character-driven, with the comedy flowing organically from the confluence of those elements.
Gary is voiced by series creator Olan Rogers, and it’s hard not to see roots of the latter in the former. Both are men who navigate the darkness of the world by the torchlight of humor, but are nevertheless unafraid to feel and show their emotions. In Gary’s case that’s manifested through his affection for fellow cadet Quinn, which begins as tongue-lolling infatuation but deepens into a truer love as their destinies intertwine (and gets more complicated when an ass-kicking variant of Quinn arrives from the future), expressed at first in obsessive soliloquies and then through companionship and selfless acts of sacrifice.
In Olan’s case, it’s the raw earnestness with which he’s engaged with the show and its fans throughout Final Space’s lifespan, especially in those times when the news hasn’t been good. When he speaks you can feel the full force of the love he feels in abundance for his creation. He always wants you to know how grateful he is – to fate, to the fans – and takes pains to hammer home the egalitarian message that with enough pluck and sweat anyone can achieve what he’s achieved. No matter the bleakness of a situation he always manages to buoy sadness with hope: the ultimate cosmic lesson in making lemonade out of lemons, or Mooncake out of moondust.
In the Beginning
You’d be forgiven for assuming that a show picked up and nurtured by Conan O’Brien and his production company, and featuring the titanic voice talents of – among many others – Doctor Who’s David Tennant (playing arch villain The Lord Commander), The Walking Dead and Invincible’s Steven Yeun (Little Catto), and Saturday Night Live’s Fred Armisen (the obnoxious robot KVN), sprung to life from some nepotistic broth in a Hollywood laboratory, but the truth is that Olan, like Gary, came from relative obscurity to realize his greater dreams and destiny through a combination of hard work, hard lessons and sacrifice.
As a child, Olan had an audience of two: his father and his brother. He’d make little movies for them, and beg them to watch, happy just to be making his family happy, little realizing that in a matter of decades his work would be adored by millions.
