Katie Lowes will be a Gladiator on-screen for the final time tonight.
Ahead of the Scandal series finale, the actress, who has been a regular on the show since 2012, tells PEOPLE that fans and viewers can expect the last storyline to solve many of their unanswered questions.
“The ending is so satisfying I thought,” Lowes admits.
“I remember in the third to last episode it’s typical, crazy Scandal with so many balls are up in the air and so many OMG moments. And I am sitting there at the third to last table read thinking, ‘How are we going to do it? How is this going to end? How are we going to leave these characters? How is this story going to come to a close?’ And I have to say when we read the last page of that final episode, it just felt really right,” she says.
“And it felt like I got a lot of what I needed. Questions answered and at the same time, the last episode makes an impact,” Lowes reveals.
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While many will be witnessing the final moments between Quinn Perkins and Olivia Pope, as well as Huck and Abby, Lowes recalls what it was like to film the last “emotional” scene.
“We were all there at four o’clock in the morning. I cried my eyes out and hugged everybody was there even people who weren’t in the scene. Every single series regular and lead actor showed up at four in the morning a lot of them had gone out to dinner to kill time,” she remembers.
“It’s crazy, I really tried to prepare but it was super, super emotional. It was like saying goodbye to something you loved so much was not easy,” Lowes adds. “It’s so crazy that we’ve known this was going to be the end for a while now.”
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But the cast and crew won’t be saying farewell to each other, just their characters.
“We’re all going to see each other. One of our cast mates is getting married so we’re going to his wedding. And we’re going to hang out at George Newbern’s house in wine country,” Lowes shares. “We have a bunch of plans to travel and hang out as a family like we always have.”
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And even after Scandal, Lowes will still be a part of Shonda Rhimes‘ company as she launches a new podcast called Katie’s Crib that will cover topics related to all things motherhood and parenting. (Lowes and husband Adam Shapiro welcomed their first child, son Albee, in October 2017.)
The final episode of Scandal airs Thursday (9 p.m. ET) on ABC.
