The first few minutes of international spy drama In from the Cold reveal that Jenny Franklin (Margarita Levieva) is living a double life: Sure, she's a single mom from New Jersey, but she's also a dormant Russian spy-slash-assassin named Anya Petrova. While Jenny is in Madrid chaperoning her teenage daughter's ice skating competition, disgraced CIA agent Chauncey (Cillian O'Sullivan) pulls Jenny back into the espionage game to help him track down a mysterious terrorist. But by the end of the season (spoiler alert), it's revealed that perhaps Jenny could actually be living a triple life: Is she a newly reactivated CIA asset, or is she spying for her homeland? 

According to Levieva, she didn't expect such a twist ending — but she loves it. While filming the closing scene, in which Jenny digs up a radio from her New Jersey backyard and contacts a Russian operative, she was "terrified," wondering, "Am I lying? Is this part of the game?" But ultimately, the star doesn't have the answer just yet — and she doesn't want to. 

Levieva tells Tudum, "The projects that are the most exciting to watch as an audience member and to participate in are the ones that don't tie everything up with a ribbon at the end. Where you're like, 'OK, we've solved this.’ So, I feel like it could go so many ways: Is Jenny working for the Russian government as a spy? Is Jenny working for the Russian government as a spy so she can avenge more people that [could potentially harm] her daughter? Does she want back in?"

Samantha López/Netflix

The finale reveals that Gideon, the mysterious person Chauncey enlists Jenny to track down, is actually Svetlana — Anya's former Russian handler and, it turns out, her mother. Svetlana had orchestrated the entire Gideon plot to lure Jenny back into her old life — though it also leads to her demise, as Jenny shoots and kills Svetlana in order to protect her own daughter, Becca (Lydia Fleming). But in the closing moments of the finale, Jenny sends a top-secret radio transmission in Russian that completely upends what we thought of the character.

We’re left to wonder if Jenny was conspiring with Svetlana the whole time. Did she know this situation would lead her back to her old life? And where does her allegiance lie? 

Creator Adam Glass has answers to some of the audience’s most burning questions because, before the show even began filming, he’d plotted out three seasons. "Obviously, the end-of-the-season reveal leaves open a lot of questions, and I think you have to play all of that out,” he tells Tudum. “What happens with her and her daughter? What happens with her and Chauncey?"

That’s ultimately what Glass would like to address in a potential second season, so he’s not going to answer those questions quite yet. One specific detail he does share is that, in the flashback storyline — to Jenny's youth as budding spy Anya — Season 2 will travel to New York City and show the origin story of "the Whisper," aka the formidable assassin that Anya came to be known as — and whom Jenny theoretically tried to escape. (Or did she?!)

Oh, and there's another big twist: The reason Jenny became so deadly as the Whisper is because a top-secret serum turned her into a shape-shifting super-soldier capable of taking on the forms of the people she meets and even turning invisible. That element was added to the story during the development process, a request from the Netflix executives working with Glass. 

"At first I was against it," he says. "I was like, 'Oh my God, I just want to tell a spy story.' But then I started to see not only all the possibilities and what it could be, but also a chance to ground it."

Jenny's powers first come into play at the end of the first episode, when she retreats into a bathroom stall and begins what sounds like a very painful transformation. In the second episode, we find out she’s disguised herself by taking the form of an older man. In subsequent episodes, she’s able to blend into the background. One consistent factor is the clear physical toll that morphing takes on Jenny's body. 

Samantha López/Netflix

The transformation scenes were inspired by An American Werewolf in London, which Glass remembers watching as a kid. The pain involved "takes away all the sexiness" that other pop culture properties sometimes infuse into their supernatural and sci-fi characters. There are no sparkly vampires here.

"If she's Mystique in X-Men, and she goes, 'Woo, change,' everything becomes too easy," Glass says. "It's the Superman issue, why it never resonated with me. I was always more of a Batman guy because he's like me; how does he get out of this? So, it was the same thing with this — there's a price to pay for using these powers."

Despite the sci-fi twist, the idea for In from the Cold came from a very real place: Glass' wife of 23 years. As their oldest child prepared to leave for college, Glass’ wife began thinking about her place and purpose in the world. 

"We have this terrible thing in this country, and maybe even the world, where women have an expiration date on them and then they're supposed to fade away, you know? I see my wife struggling with that," Glass says. "Like, 'What's next for me?' Of course, because I'm a writer, I started thinking, well, what if my wife was a spy? And what if my wife had a secret past? And then it spiraled into this story that you see, which is, 'Can you go back and be who you were? How does your past define your present? Who are you? And how do you move forward?'"

Ultimately, it's that aspect of the show — examining society's treatment of women and empowering women to control their lives — that Glass is most proud of. And not only does Levieva play that role on-screen, Glass hired a staff to carry that mission out behind the scenes as well, at every level. 

"The writer's room was predominantly female. [We had] female directors; most of my heads of departments were women. My stunt people: women," says Glass. "I was raised by strong women; I'm married to a strong woman. I have a very strong, wonderful, feminist daughter. I wanted to write a love letter to that, but I'm also a man and I wanted help.” 

Glass says that he is “super proud of the show” — including the twist ending. But his one hope? “I wish more moms would watch it, because I think they would see a reflection of themselves in this and the relationship that she has with her daughter and that they're superheroes too and they kick butt."