Bates Motel films its fifth and final season in metro Vancouver this Fall. After it wraps early next year, the iconic Bates House and Motel set in Aldergrove will be torn down.
Mother-and-son Norma (Vera Farmiga) and Norman (Freddie Highmore) Bates in happier times.
Last season in the penultimate episode Forever, Norman killed his mother in what he thought would be permanent carbon-monoxide-induced sleep for both, but he unexpectedly survived. In total denial and desperate to get her back, he dug up her corpse and brought Norma home.
Mother will live on in season five, but only in Norman’s head. This is the Norman we know from Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1960 film Psycho. And so it’s appropriate in the final season that the series introduces its version of Marion Crane played by pop star Rihanna (who’s also cast in the all-female Ocean’s 8). In Psycho, Crane checks into the motel and is killed by Norman-as-Mother in the shower.
How will Marion Crane differ in the series?
“We wanted to thrust the iconic role into a contemporary spotlight and redefine it in a meaningful and exciting new way,” executive producers Carlton Cuse and Kerry Ehrin said at San Diego Comic Con. “We also heard Rihanna was a fan of the show, and we were huge fans of hers, so it was the perfect collision of creativity and fate.”
Bates Motel is expected to start filming its fifth and final season on September 16th in metro Vancouver and wrap January 24th next year (dates subject to change).