Black Twitter has some questions about "The Best Man: The Final Chapters."
All eight episodes of the series premiered on Peacock Dec. 22 and have been regularly trending on Twitter. The response has largely been adoration for how a legacy franchise finished telling the story of characters from the movies "The Best Man" and "The Best Man Holiday."
The characters and storylines take some unexpected turns that seem random and contradictory to what happened in the movies. Harold Perrineau, who plays Julian "Murch" Murchison in the series, gives TODAY.com answers to some of the most confusing parts of the show.
Why is Quentin engaged to a unicorn?
Both of the movies end with Quentin (Terrence Howard) and Shelby (Melissa De Sousa) hooking up. Shortly after that intimate scene in the second movie, Quentin announces that he's getting married.
Logically, fans assumed that it would be to Shelby, especially because the second movie drops little hints that Quentin is the father of Shelby's daughter, Kennedy, and the series later confirms it.
Instead, the series opens with Quentin engaged to Xiomara (Nicole Ari Parker) in a plot twist no one saw coming.
"What was the point of the Xiomara character," one person wrote on Twitter.
Xiomara, also called the unicorn, only appears in the first two episodes and Perrineau says he remembers his first time reading the scripts for those episodes with the cast and the creator, Malcolm D. Lee, in the room. Perrineau thinks the Xiomara storyline was included to have some funny banter.
"I thought the whole thing was funny," Perrineau says. "When I first read it, that’s when (Malcolm) told us that Nicole Parker was gonna come and be the unicorn and it was like yeah, this is going to be funny."
Xiomara as a ploy to facilitate more jokes makes sense because Quentin ends up dumping her and marrying Shelby after all.
Why is Murch upset about not being Best Man?
Perrineau knows people are annoyed with Murch's insistence on being Quentin's best man instead of Harper (Taye Diggs), who Quentin picks.
"I was a little worried about playing Murch at that point," he says. "This (was) him at the height of annoying. People are just gonna be like give it up — you're not the best man. I was just like I have to lean into it and just know that people are going to be annoyed about it. But I thought it was funny, so that part of it made it really cool."
Perrineau explains that Murch was upset because he felt overlooked and it resurfaced some insecurities he has about not always fitting into the friend group.
"I think Murch is always the character who is trying to find a way to fit in a little bit more," Perrineau says. "He's not the athlete. He certainly isn't the coolest one. He isn't Mr. Handsome. And so he's always, even though they all love each other, I think he's always trying to find his way in."
Plus, Perrineau says, Harper's track record of being best man didn't make him fit for the role. In the first movie, Harper is Lance's (Morris Chestnut) best man and he previously slept with the bride (Monica Calhoun). Lance finds out in a very dramatic way and he fights Harper over it and they end up falling out for years.
But during that time, Murch and Quentin only got closer.
"Over the years, Quentin and Murch always seemed like quite a pair," Perrineau says. "So for Quentin to pick Harper after all the drama (was insulting), at least this is how I figure it."
In the first two episodes, Murch is carrying out all the best man duties — planning the bachelor party and tending to whatever the groom needs. Harper, on the other hand, is passing off his to-do list to Murch and Quentin notices, so he makes Murch best man.
Taking over the role is a full circle moment for the franchise in which the best man has previously slept with the bride because Murch and Shelby dated in the first movie.
Why are Shelby and Candace friends?
In the first two movies, Shelby and Murch's wife Candace (Regina Hall) are enemies. In the show, Shelby enlists Candace's help to win Quentin over and makes her the only brides maid.
"Shelby and Candace can't be friends," one person tweeted. "(I) don't see it."
Shelby previously blamed Candace for why she and Murch broke up. Shelby regularly shamed Candace for working as a stripper to pay her way through college and the two had a huge physical altercation about it in the second movie. One of its last scenes showed Shelby calling a truce and apologizing to Candace. It was only then that Shelby stopped trying to get Murch back.
Perrineau says they're friends now because their problems don't exist anymore.
"Even when they get into a bit of a tangle, or some kind of fight, they find a way back to being friends," he says. "When Shelby does come in to get some help from Candace, Candace is a little standoffish. She's like, 'I don't even understand what's happening here.' But it's all so far in the past. All that stuff is so far in the past that we could kind of try to find present moments."
Shelby asked Candace to teach her how to dance for Quentin at his bachelor party, the same type of dancing Candace did on Murch the night they met at Lance's bachelor party in the first movie.
Perrineau says Candace could relate to Shelby's goal and that's why she agreed to help.
"Well, if she's really just trying to get her man, I understand that," Perrineau said of Candace's decision. "That winds up being easy for her to help Shelby and then continue on to be friends because now she's got her man."
Why is Murch doing MMA?
Perrineau says Murch doing MMA was plucked from his own personal life as he and his kids do MMA and other fighting arts in real life. Black Twitter thought it was very random for Murch
“Murch getting into MMA was random but cool,” someone on Twitter wrote.
Immediately before Murch starts MMA, he has an encounter with a Karen and is completely powerless and is confronted by the police. During that same time, Candace's schedule becomes jam packed as she works on her dissertation, leaving the brunt of the housework and childcare on Murch. So he then becomes keenly aware and upset about how much control he has over things that are supposed to be under his purview.
In the show, Murch says he doesn't know where he fits into his own life. He is also upset about how he's depicted as spineless and emasculated in Harper's movie adaption of his book from the first movie, "Unfinished Business," so Murch has a lot of pent up frustration and unspoken emotions he needs to release, Perrineau says.
"They need a place to experience their rage or their anger because sometimes you let it out on the wrong folks and that's not where it belongs. You need your rage. You need to understand it a little bit better. So I take the martial arts is a perfect place," he says.
Do Harper and Jordan end up together?
The absolute million dollar question of the series is, do Harper and Jordan (Nia Long) end up together?
In the series, Harper and Jordan share a passionate kiss, but are interrupted by an emergency phone call. Almost the exact same kiss/interruption sequence happened in the first movie.
After the kiss, Harper's wife Robyn (Sanaa Lathan) divorces him and he goes to Jordan. She rejects him saying she can't be his soft place to land, he needs time to heal and she will not wait on him. But then she says "I love you" and kisses him. The series then jumps two years ahead and Harper and Jordan are both single and making googly eyes at each other.
The door has clearly closed on Robyn and Harper's "heart was always with Jordan," someone said on Twitter.
Perrineau says films are the exact place for a Harper-Jordan love story, so "yes, they eventually do" end up together.
"If it were real life, probably not because it's just too much they have to work through now. They might, but in the movie, I would love for them to live happily ever after. And they look so cute together too. It'd be really satisfying if they did."
