Rudy Pankow, the actor who played JJ Maybank on the Netflix series, has expressed his intention to watch the upcoming season despite not appearing in it. The season 4 finale of the show ended with JJ's death, which was confirmed as planned from the start. Despite his absence from the series, he expressed his appreciation for the process of playing JJ and believes the writers did so to deepen his role. The creators and showrunners previously confirmed that JJ’s death will serve as the "main spine" of season 5, which began filming in summer 2025 and does not yet have a release date.