When speaking with GoldDerby, Martell shared that he had the creative freedom to choose which direction he wanted to take with his character Jacob, similar to how the show's ending leaves it up to the viewer to decide whether the titular character is guilty or not.
"After reading the scripts it was still unclear, so the first time I met Mark [Bomback] and Morten [Tyldum], the writer and the director, I asked them whether or not he did it," he told the publication. "Basically, Morten said that I can choose whether or not he did it, and they didn't wanna know, they didn't want me to tell anybody. It took me a while to decide through pre-production whether he did it or not, so I guess I'm the only person who knows for a fact if he killed Ben."