FX’s twenty-something hangout comedy Adults has been one of the surprise word-of-mouth hits of the summer, and that’s due in large part to the irresistible chemistry among its cast of charming young stars—especially roomies Paul Baker (Jack Innanen) and Anton (Owen Thiele).
Like Friends before it, the fun of the series is watching different combinations of these characters bounce off of one another, but fans quickly picked up on a deeper, unspoken connection building between the two.
The mustachioed “new guy,” Paul Baker—yes, he’s always referred to by his full name—is introduced to the group by way of Issa (Amita Rao), who he has a pretty casual relationship with, largely defined by hooking up. However, he’s proudly sexually fluid, and we’re not the only ones to sense a flirty energy every time he’s with Anton, who is gay.
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It all comes to a head in the season one finale, in which *spoiler* it’s decided Canadian Paul Baker will have a green-card marriage with Issa in order to stay in the country. But when she gets cold feet at the courthouse, he decides to get hitched to Anton instead.
That night while celebrating, the group urges the newlyweds to share a kiss, which starts polite and gets quickly passionate, much to everyone’s surprise. And that’s where the season ends, with a romantic cliffhanger for the ages!
‘Shippers of the pair—who have dubbed them “Panton”—are clamoring for a Season 2 renewal to see where this thing goes, and we’ve already noted these two have the potential to be TV’s next great will-they-won’t-they couple.
But are we all just reading into things a little too much, trying to manifest a queer relationship where there isn’t one? Did Adults just throw that kiss in there for pure shock value, a little comedy note to end the season on?
Well, never fear “Panton” ‘shippers, Jack Innanen just revealed that Paul Baker and Anton really are endgame, and that their relationship was originally meant to go even further.
In a new interview with GQ, the TikTok star-turned-actor opens up about his breakout moment and his shameless campaign to be the internet’s latest “White Boy of The Month.” But he understands a big part of the reason Paul Baker’s been so adored by fans is because of his brewing thing with Thiele’s Anton.
And, apparently, the actors knew the guys getting together was part of the game-plan from the jump. In fact, Innanen says their relationship “was originally supposed to be a lot more,” though he stops just shy of revealing how, exactly.
“I don’t know how much I can say about that,” he confesses. “The car scene at the clinic was going to be a lot more as well, and what’s in the finished product is a lot more stripped back.”
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It seems the show’s writers didn’t want to play their hand too much, and instead chose to let the dynamic between the two develop more naturally. The cast didn’t even know how the season would wrap up until the week they began filming the final episode.
“We actually didn’t know how it was going to end,” Innanen admits. “I just knew that there might be a Paul Baker and Anton thing at the end. So a lot of that is genuine chemistry. The beauty of that was we didn’t actually know we’re setting this thing up. It was just almost genuine flirting of how these two are figuring each other out as we are figuring out what this means. It wasn’t like, ‘Okay, here you’re going to touch his back, and that’s signaling something for the next episode.’”
That genuine, go-with-the-flow vibe extended to the fateful kiss, which was the last scene they all shot together. As things get heated between Paul Baker and Anton, their friends Issa, Billie (Lucy Freyer), and Samir (Malik Elassal) all look on in shock—which wasn’t entirely acting.
“I think a lot of those reactions were real,” Innanen remembers. “I think it was so beautiful how we did it because then those feelings are real, like, ‘Oh, this is my friend, but we made out and then we’re in front of our other friends.’ Even when they called cut, everyone was still like, ‘Whoa.’ It was so fun.
Though Innanen hasn’t publicly come out as sexually fluid himself, his eagerness to explore this on-screen queer relationship and general laissez-faire attitude about kissing guys is certainly helping make his case for White Boy Of The Month, as far as we’re concerned.
And one need not search too hard online to see that most of the internet agrees:
FX has yet to renew Adults for a second season—to which we say: “WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR FX?”—but the cast has been keeping us fed with hilarious social media content in the meantime.
For example, this mock Architectural Digest tour of the house? Brilliant, yes, exactly what we want to see—more please! We’ll take whatever we can get until that Season 2 announcement comes through!
The entire first season of Adults is now streaming on Hulu and has been airing weekly every Wednesday on FX.
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