Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for the finale of Untamed.Sam Neill will forever be known to theatergoers as Dr. Alan Grant from the Jurassic Park franchise. However, on Thursday, he left the field of paleontology behind to tackle Netflix’s Untamed, a murder mystery miniseries set in the great outdoors and invoking the likes of True Detective. Beyond simply starring in it, his character, Chief Park Ranger Paul Souter, ended up being the lynchpin holding the case together. The series follows National Park Service special agent Kyle Turner’s (Eric Bana) investigation into the death of a Jane Doe in Yosemite, which unravels the dark secrets hidden in the wilderness, including the lineage of the victim, revealed to be Lucy Cook. At the end of the trail, everything led back to Paul, culminating in what Bana described as a traumatic moment that shattered the respect Kyle once had for the veteran ranger and made for an “incredible” memory when filming.

In an interview with Collider’s Christina Radish following the series’ launch on the platform, Bana was asked about the big finale twist and how it changed his feelings about Neill’s Paul Souter. The final moments of Untamed see Kyle confronting Paul about Lucy’s parentage after poking around about her foster home and sending in for another DNA test. As it turns out, the ranger was secretly the victim’s biological father, hiding his other daughter from the sample to ensure Lucy wouldn’t get traced back to him. The reveal goes even deeper than that, with Souter having whisked his biological daughter away to said foster home after her mother’s death, giving her a new name of Grace McCray in hopes that she’d be kept a secret from the world. Years later, she’d return to Yellowstone, extorting her father under the threat of exposing him to the rest of his family, culminating in an attempt to scare her off, which went horribly wrong when Lucy jumped off a cliff to escape Paul with a gun.

A lot of the credit, Bana believes, belongs to series co-creator and The Revenant scribe Mark L. Smith‘s instinct to keep stacking up the trauma on Kyle. The special agent is already in a bad spot when the series starts, having to return to Yellowstone five years after his son was murdered in the park and at a time when he’s still deeply haunted by the incident. Lucy’s case resonated with him from the beginning because of the similar nature — a disappearance in the woods that turns sinister — but learning that Paul, someone he respected, was behind it only amplified the impact on the special agent. Capping it off with a harrowing note, Paul takes his own life after insisting he was just trying to protect his family and understanding how his decisions snowballed into something irredeemable. It all hit Bana hard on the day of filming as he played out the reveal and leaned into the real feelings he felt for Paul after everything:

“Life just never got easier for Kyle, with every episode. When I read it, I was like, ‘This is so Mark Smith to do this.’ You know something traumatic is going to happen and you’re not quite sure exactly how it’s going to reveal itself, but it was an incredible twist. Sam [Neill] did such a great job. It was such a massive scene that we had together. I just couldn’t believe the level of trauma that would be there for Kyle, as a result of that reveal, and then what Paul does after that. We just leaned into it to see what would happen on the day and react accordingly.”

Eric Bana Was Thrilled to Explore ‘Untamed’s Most Dramatic Scenes With Sam Neill

Everything about Untamed‘s case is heavy, but Bana had a lot of talented individuals to tackle it with, from Rosemarie DeWitt to Wilson Bethel and the supporting cast of Lily Santiago, William Smillie, Raoul Max Trujillo, Josh Randall, and Ezra Franky. All of their efforts helped power the series to solid reviews overall, with a Certified Fresh 77% score from critics on Rotten Tomatoes. Working alongside Neill was potentially a once-in-a-career opportunity for the actor, though. Jurassic Park may be his most universally beloved role, but he’s also shown impressive dramatic chops on features like The Hunt for Red October and the Apple TV+ series Apples Never Fall. Landing him was a dream for Bana, and it made acting out scenes like the show’s big reveal all the smoother for him:

“When he agreed to come on board, we were so thrilled. I felt like I was going to be in really great hands. I knew I had a lot of really important scenes with the Paul Souter character, and he was just a dream. He was just absolutely incredible, with great energy. He was super professional. It just felt effortless.”

All episodes of Untamed are now streaming on Netflix.