He should have stopped a long time ago, but he's not going to.' 'But so much of it is not just a mustache-twirling, 'I'm a bad guy,' but a guy that just got in a situation and went through a maybe wrong direction and then had the cover for that, and it just keeps pushing his chips in. 'What I love so much about getting to play this guy is, is he a bad guy? I don't know. You tell me,' he said. It's all of those doubts and questions that make Ward a dream character to play for Esten. 'She probably represents to him what he was and the best side of himself that he could have been before all of this. That bond, as messed up as it is - and let's be clear, it's very messed up - there's something there,' he said. 'You're just seeing on his face, and you're reading what you will. That acceptance may not be what it appeared, though, with Esten pointing out that he liked the 'nebulous nature of the ending where Ward's not saying what he's feeling.' 'So at a certain point, Ward had to come around to that and go, 'All right.' I mean, there's all those levels of grieving. It's that Sarah made it very, very clear that she was not choosing Ward or the family,' Esten explained. The one that he put all his hopes, all his dreams for. It's not so much, in some ways, that Ward chose Rafe. When it comes to Sarah, though, Esten thinks that the teen 'is too bright for Ward's good.' And I'm certain, he's got reasons to worry about.' 'First, trying to give him the tough love and then bringing him back in. He's still a father trying to keep the connection with Sarah, trying to keep Rafe,' he continued. 'So Ward, throughout all of this, is still a dad.

All of those things, that would be hard enough if we had a good family dynamic at home, but Rafe has always had these issues, and he has his drug problem.' But I didn't handle that right, for sure. 'You can see this whole situation with the treasure and the chasing of it, and the Pogues getting it, and the trying to cover up the death of Big John, that accident. 'We knew that in the first season,' Esten told ET of Rafe's troubles. It's like, 'Wow.''Īside from his faked death, Ward was at the center of the drama when he seemed to choose his son, Rafe (Drew Starkey) over his daughter, Sarah, despite 'absolutely' knowing the former has problems.

'Then they take just long enough, it doesn't happen the next episode or even the next. where you almost start to go, 'I guess he's gone,'' Ward continued.

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