Paramount+ revealed Thursday that it will be expanding its global Korean originals slate with the launch of two new series exclusively on the service in multiple regions around the world. Forthcoming K-dramas A Bloody Lucky Day and Queen Woo will be available on Paramount+ in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Australia, Latin America, Brazil, Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland and Austria. The two series are the latest projects developed by Paramount+ and Korean streamer TVING, as part of Paramount’s global partnership with Korean entertainment powerhouse CJ ENM.

The announcement comes amid some early success for Paramount+’s Korean originals, with Bargain, an upcoming K-drama from the company, winning the best screenplay prize at last night’s Canneseries Awards Ceremony in France. The service also revealed that recently launched Korean drama series Yonder has become its most-watched international series in the U.S. so far this year. Yonder, which stars  Shin Ha-kyun and Han Ji-min, premiered globally on the service on April 11, while Bargain will go live on Paramount+ this summer.

A Bloody Lucky Day is a thriller action series about an ordinary taxi driver Taek, who gets entangled with a customer that turns out to be a serial killer. The series is directed by Pil Gam-Sung (Hostage: Missing Celebrity) and written by Kim Min-sung and Song Hanna. It is produced by CJ ENM’s production house Studio Dragon, The Great Show and Studio N, and stars Lee Sung-min (Reborn Rich) as Oh Taek, the taxi driver; Yoo Yeon-seok (Hospital Playlist) as Geum Hyuk-soo, the psychopathic killer; and Lee Jung-eun (Parasite, Yonder) as Hwang Soon-gyu, the relentless chaser.

Queen Woo is a period drama series directed by Jung Se-kyo (Oh! My Gran) and written by Lee Byoung-hak (The Royal Tailor). It follows the story of Queen Woo Hee, the first woman in history to become queen twice, as she embarks on a journey to inherit the throne amidst a fierce battle between all the tribes owned by the late King’s brothers. TVING recently announced that Jun Jong-seo (Bargain) will play Queen Woo, with additional cast members to be revealed at a later date.

“We are incredibly proud of our Korean content that is finally taking the global stage, engaging viewers and fans on Paramount+ and beyond,” said Catherine Park, senior vp and head of streaming and regional lead for Asia at Paramount. “The addition of A Bloody Lucky Day and Queen Woo strengthens our global content offering, and we look forward to bringing more original Korean content to our viewers worldwide.”

SPOILER ALERT: The following story reveals major plot points from tonight’s series finale of FX’s Snowfall.

After 6 seasons, FX’s hit drama series Snowfall said its final goodbye tonight, and while most of what transpired was somewhat expected, seeing a promising life end in poverty and despair is absolutely heartbreaking.

Viewers have been on a journey with Franklin Saint (Damson Idris), seeing his highs and lows and cheering him on no matter what he’s gotten himself into. But money and power tend to change people, especially when said fortune comes from criminal activities. In the end, Franklin is left with no family and friends to speak of—except his day one Leon Simmons (Isaiah John)—a shadow of himself resembling his father Alton Williams (Kevin Carroll) at his lowest in Season 1, drunk and destitute.

“His final moments were incredibly challenging. There was a fatherhood connection there, which I connected to personally so it was deeply emotional for me. Franklin’s connection to his father and his becoming an alcoholic was incredibly difficult,” Idris told Deadline. “Behind the scenes, I had a little flask with me that no one knew about. I would touch it with my lips just to have the taste. I’ll also admit that I didn’t shower. Luckily I wasn’t disrupting anyone with any odors,” he said with a laugh.

Thanks to Cissy (Michael Hyatt), who is locked up in prison for murdering Teddy McDonald (Carter Hudson) in episode 9, Leon makes it out alive just in time. With his wife Wanda (Gail Bean) by his side, they leave for Ghana in search of a new life until the crack epidemic is under control. When Leon returns, he seeks out his friend Franklin, who is hiding out inside the family home which is now dilapidated, and bears an eviction note on the door.

Leon is stunned at who Franklin has become but they take a walk around the neighborhood while they catch up. In one corner, the duo walks past a movie that’s in production as a nod to co-creator John Singleton’s hit film Boyz In The Hood, released in 1991, the year Snowfall ends.

“If you think about it in some ways, Snowfall is a little bit of a prologue to Boyz, and how the neighborhood got to the point you experience in the film,” series co-creator Dave Andron. “We did jump forward in time a number of years and we didn’t put an actual date on it but the newspapers that Leon steps on the street are from September 1990, which was when John started filming Boyz in the Hood. It was very intentional to drop back into that moment in time to pick up that story where John picked it up with the movie. That was a little tip of the hat to him.”

Now, for anyone wondering why the decision was made not to kill off Franklin and put him out of misery, Andron explains.

“It’s funny because when we talked about whether should Franklin die, there was a contingent of people who felt that that was an easy way out. That that him dying means he doesn’t have to face the damage he’s done. He destroyed this neighborhood and did unreal damage to his community. They really needed a helping hand and what they got was another plague. I think in those terms, the dramatic irony of him having no place to live except for Cissy’s house where he will constantly be faced with what he has wrought felt like a certain kind of hell. Now he has to be on the street with these junkies who he in some way is responsible for. The dramatic irony of that felt right to us,” said Andron.

Damson is proud to be part of Singleton’s legacy; Snowfall serves as the filmmaker’s final project before his death in 2019. His time with Singleton will be forever cherished.

“My favorite moments were my time with John Singleton, building the character and discovering the world and just educating myself on the era. So many people didn’t know about certain things related to the crack epidemic,” Idris said. “You look at the laws that came from it, the bias and the Clinton administration and so many things that impacted Black people in this country. It was amazing to understand that history.”

As Deadline exclusively confirmed in late March, a spinoff is in early development with the character of Wanda rumored to be the connective tissue between the original show and the offshoot. In the series finale, Leon mentions he and Wanda are back in Los Angeles because she’s interested in producing music potentially setting up the show’s follow-up.

“She came back from Africa at the very end, and even though we don’t see her we hear about her from Leon, she’s back and she’s got a dream,” Andron shared. “She’s gonna have a whole life and she’s found something she’s passionate about, something she wants to be a part of. This for me goes back to the Wanda whom we first met. If that creativity and heart go into music, I feel like she might actually be able to carve something out.”

He continued, “And you know, West Coast hip hop is about to explode. So telling the story of what’s been going on in South Central in the way that Singleton told it with Boyz N The Hood. And so as you know, it leaked out there that we may try to continue telling that story because it felt worthy of Snowfall, and I felt worthy of John Singleton. So we’re gonna see if we can figure that out.”

SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains spoilers for “Franklin Institute,” the Season 2 finale of “Abbott Elementary.”

Will they? Won’t they? They won’t, at least for now.

Though Janine (series creator Quinta Brunson) and Gregory (Tyler James Williams) finally had their first kiss at a teacher conference in Episode 16 of “Abbott Elementary’s” second season, they chalk it up to a “whoops,” bury their feelings and continue forward as friends and colleagues.

There’s a hitch of course: Janine is dating Gregory’s friend, Maurice (Vince Staples). So in Episode 17, the blushing pair head to Bone Town — Maurice’s favorite barbecue spot — to confess their mistake to Maurice and basically break up with him together.

Finally, Janine and Gregory are single at the same time and they get closer and closer as the season wraps up. But at the start of the finale, Janine runs into Maurice again, who says casually that they’re both in their “selfish eras.” That instantly complicates things. Realizing that someone thinks of her that way makes Janine reconsider whether she’s ready for a serious relationship at all. After a day of Janine avoiding Gregory, the two finally start to hash it out during a sleep-in field trip at Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute.

Brunson spoke to Variety about where the almost-couple could go from here.

At what point in writing the season did you know where this first kiss would happen and that the finale would go this way?

We started mapping it out pretty early on. There’s always room for change and rearranging, but for me as a writer, the best thing to do is say, “We want to be here in Episode 9. We want to be here in Episode 15.”‘ And we have 22, which is a blessing and a curse, because you have a lot of time to make small things happen and to make big things happen. We wound up landing on like an every-three-or-four-episodes pattern for them.

In the episodes that focus less on Janine and Gregory’s relationship, the other characters are gossiping about them.

With relationships in a workplace, it’s always a thing that other co-workers see it. Sometimes shows try to avoid that, because maybe it gives away the mystery or the climax of the situation, but I just felt, realistically, with this tight-knit group in this small school, they would know. But it’s no big deal to them. There are bigger fish to fry. Janine and Gregory — the school does not revolve around them. Most of them probably look at it like, “Ugh! These kids. Y’all like each other! Grow up!” I thought that was an interesting approach to take with the characters. “We don’t care!”

Where did the idea for the sleep-in museum field trip come from?

We really enjoyed ending on that field trip last year. I probably will want to do it every season. It’s just fun! We’re all — I think about the audience as part of the show — we’re all in this school all year, and it’s rewarding to get to go somewhere else at the end of the season, just like a regular school, and look forward to that. And I’d gone on a field trip to the Franklin Institute, but I’ve always wanted to do a sleep-in and never got to do that.

We also got excited about, “Who are these people when they go to bed?” Which wound up bringing out the Barbara [Sheryl Lee Ralph] CPAP story. Last season’s finale, we had the story of Barbara being like, “Am I near retirement?” This was a story of, “Am I ashamed of aging?” Although many people have CPAP machines, we associate it with aging. I thought it was interesting to do with Barbara, who’s so put together that you’d assume she sleeps like an angel.

Parts of this episode were shot on location in Philadelphia, which “Abbott Elementary” hasn’t done before. What was that like?

So exciting, oh my gosh. Me and Tyler were the only main cast members that went to Philly. The rest of the set of the Franklin Institute was built out at Warner Brothers. But there were some things we couldn’t rebuild. We were going to try to rebuild the [room-sized, anatomically correct] heart that Gregory and Janine have their conversation in front of, but it cost more to rebuild than just flying our whole crew to Philly. We got to get some Philadelphians involved — most of the kids in the background are Philadelphia natives and we used some crew from Philly. And it was really awesome for the crew to see the city. A lot of people had never been to Philadelphia before. They were scouting the Franklin Institute and came back and told me, “Quinta! There are a bunch of kids who just look like Abbott kids! They’re in the uniforms!” Like, yeah, it’s pretty accurate! But it was exciting for them to see just how right we got it.

All of Gregory and Janine’s big moments this season happen off-campus. That makes sense, since they’re always around kids, but this time, the kids are present. How did that impact their conversation?

The writers and I naturally fall into that space. Here are two people who care about their jobs so much, that when they’re in these four walls, they almost can’t bring themselves to talk about this big thing. And as soon as they’re not in those four walls, the boundary has dissolved in a way they’re not even ready for. But the school is the main concern, and while they’re there, they can always deflect to that. “I have to do my work. This thing is a non-existent thing. I’m making it up in my head.” When they leave, they don’t really have that option anymore. I still think they struggle with it, as we can see clearly at the teacher conference where there’s no kids to keep them from each other.

At the museum, it’s interesting, because the kids are there. Their job is there. They care about the job, but they’re also out of the school. That’s what’s pushing the admission of liking each other. Jacob [played by Chris Perfetti] knows it. The cameras know it. We know it as the audience. But they’ve never really said it to each other. So this trip evokes a certain amount of honesty, because they really can’t move on — Gregory’s not gonna live in a world in which Janine is avoiding him. Janine’s not going to live in a world where she’s going to avoid Gregory.

After Gregory confesses his feelings and Janine reciprocates, she pauses things to say, “Maybe I am selfish, and if I need to be right now, then I don’t wanna wind up hurting you.” Even with the Maurice situation, Janine is such a giver and it’s hard to see her that way. What does selfish Janine look like?

What was interesting about the Maurice angle to me was, when Janine and Gregory broke up with Maurice, we get to move on in the audience and be happy that Janine and Gregory have a chance now. But what happens to that person who was broken up with and rejected by two people? That was a little bit of a selfish act on their part. And it doesn’t make Janine a bad person, but she is genuinely shocked when Maurice doesn’t wave back at her. But why would he? He doesn’t love the way that happened, so he’s not gonna go back to being friends. Maurice had been pretty open, and when that moment happened to him, it felt like Janine wasn’t as open with him. So he had every right to feel a little slighted.

Hearing to her face that someone found her selfish, because she’s such an overthinker, it immediately becomes a race to not harm Gregory, or harm this thing that she thinks is going to be very special. To me, it’s small, but it’s big to her. She looks at Ava as selfish; she doesn’t want to be there. But if she is, she needs to deal with it and not hurt anyone ever again, especially Gregory.

After bad timing has been their main obstacle for two years, they now seem to have their first fundamental disagreement. Even though he understands her position, Gregory is on the side of the audience, where he’s ready to move on. What does that mean for their compatibility?

There’s grace and a lot of care in Gregory hearing what Janine is saying. Hearing it, caring about her and being like, “Okay. I respect that as a friend, and there’s nothing left for me to do.” Janine will focus on herself on becoming ready, examining herself to try to be like, “Okay, I think I’m ready to never do that again.” And I don’t think Gregory’s the type to wait for that, but there’s room for Janine to learn that she didn’t have to be so hard on herself about the Maurice situation, either. Dating, for young people, isn’t cut-and-dry. You’ll talk to some friends who are like, “Yeah, I stopped talking to that person. I was just afraid to this, that and the other.” But that doesn’t mean you stop talking to them! You continue to communicate! Ghosting makes the other person feel horrible. That’s how messy the dating world is, and they’re in the middle of that mess. The only thing they can do is support each other through it. Whether that be dating other people seriously, or someone saying “I’m ready now” and the person saying “I’m not” or “I don’t want to do this anymore” — they have to be friends, first and foremost. I don’t know, but it’s gonna be fun to explore when we get back to the writers room.

This interview has been edited and condensed.