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IGN chats with Freddie Highmore, along with EPs Carlton Cuse and Kerry Ehrin, about this week\'s shocking, show-changing development.

WARNING: Huge spoilers for this week\'s Bates Motel episode, "Forever." YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

Before Bates Motel\'s final season rolls out next year, it looks like poor Norma\'s been taken out of play. For good. Norman had sick (yet noble?) plans about the two of them falling asleep forever - a murder/suicide deal involving a gas leak in the house - but Sheriff Romero came in and pulled them both out of bed. Saving Norman in the process, but not Norma, who the good Sheriff could not resuscitate. Norman\'s plan had failed and as the episode ended, he realized his mother was gone and he was still alive. Possibly his worst nightmare at this point.

Yes, Season 4\'s penultimate episode, "Forever," was big, and I spoke to star Freddie Highmore, along with series EPs Carlton Cuse and Kerry Ehrin, about Norman\'s thought process and all that went into his decision to remove himself and his mother from the a world that didn\'t understand them.

I should note that I couldn\'t get a solid, 100% confirmation that Norma is, in fact, dead. That doesn\'t mean anything either way, except that the season finale probably holds more information for us.

IGN: At what point did Norman come to the decision to end his and Norma\'s life?

Freddie Highmore: I think it\'s a build throughout the episode. I think the time when he finds the suitcase and has that moment of self awareness and puts on the robe and realizes that there are darker truths that lie behind many of his actions, I think that\'s a key moment. And then when he sees just how broken they both are in the kitchen. And Vera [Farmiga] was just so heartbreaking in that. And seeing her collapse onto the kitchen table was so moving. And I think that just confirmed in his mind that it was the right thing to do and that this was how the two of them could be happier. Once he\'s up in the bedroom I think his mind has been made. And that\'s what makes the scene so powerful. There\'s a happiness to it. A lightness to it. Their last scene together isn\'t going to be a fight or a struggle. It\'s going to be them dreaming and bonding and then dreaming on once they\'ve both well and truly fallen asleep.

IGN: Early in the season, Norma tried to seduce Norman in a desperate move to get a gun out of his hand. Was there any seduction going on here on Norman\'s part?

Highmore: I feel like Norman has most certainly become more manipulative this season. But there\'s still a spark of the old Norman that remains within. That we buy into. And I don\'t think that it\'s a performance in the end. The last scene with the two of them. I think there\'s something very genuine underneath it all. There may be this knowledge that he has and she doesn\'t but I don\'t think it\'s a pure act of seduction in the sense of manipulation.

Kerry Ehrin: I agree. I think it was him trying to comfort her and calm her and make her as happy as he possibly could before he turned the lights out on them.

Carlton Cuse: There\'s a scene earlier in the show, like Freddie mentioned, where Norman discovers the suitcase. And the horror of that event and the fact that he\'s not really sure if he\'s responsible or his mother\'s responsible helps him come to this decision. That they don\'t belong in this world. And once he comes to this decision there\'s kind of a comfort that comes with it. The rightness and the correctness of it that allows him to be acting the way he\'s acting in that moment in the bed."

Ehrin: It was the best way to handle this so that they can stay together and stop breaking their hearts by trying to live in the world.

IGN: How did you decide to use "Mr. Sandman?" It\'s a nostalgic song, but it also has humorous qualities to it when juxtaposed with a scene as creepy as Norman closing up all the house vents so that he could kill them both.

Cuse: It was a callback. It was a song they\'d sung together during a happier time. This was a very emotionally-based decision that he\'s making and that song contains all these different elements to it. Some of which you just mentioned. It\'s happy but there\'s also a seuctive creepiness to it. Just emotionally it conveyed what we wanted to convey. Picking music is a very visceral and emotional process. But we\'d seen it before in the show it felt like the right callback at that moment.

IGN: Being that this is a five season show, did that help you all plot out a moment as big as this? And Freddie, how does knowing the exact duration of the series help you as a performer?

Highmore: The thing I\'ve been with lucky with in this show, as opposed to other TV shows, is that I\'ve always known where Norman is going - season by season, seeing what happens. There has to be a certain plan in place because there\'s an end that you\'re working towards. And that\'s really what sort of elevated this season. And hopefully next season it will climb even higher as we rush toward that certain final point. The one we\'ve been waiting to release the build up of the first three seasons. But I guess things never really changed for me in the sense that I\'ve known that I\'ll be there right until the end. Other people have been like "Oh, maybe I\'ll be killed off." But I always knew I\'d be there in the end [laughs].

Cuse: I guess no one has told Freddie that the last three episodes focus on the person cleaning the rooms [laughs]. No, but right from the very first conversations Kerry and I had about the show - you know it\'s very hard to discuss the show in a vacuum - but one of the first things we decided was that the series needed to have a beginning, middle, and end. And that the audience should get a resolution as to what happens to Norma and Norman. And as we started talking about the show in more detail, it came together as a five-year journey for us. This story. And so the events here at the end of Season 4 are huge and long-planned. And really set in motion the high drama of the final season.

IGN: Speaking of the season finale next week, what can you tell us about it?

Cuse: I can tease that Kerry Ehrin wrote a really beautiful script and that Freddie is phenomenal in the episode. And that you\'re going to come out of Episode 9 with a lot of questions and the finale will be all about addressing those questions. It picks up right where nine left off and really takes you to a deeper emotional understanding as to where the characters stand as the season draws to a close.

Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN and a member of the Television Critics Association (TCA). Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at Facebook.com/Showrenity.

Bates Motel First Aired Mar. 2013