‘Bates Motel’ Finale: Freddie Highmore Reveals What He Would Have Put On Norman’s Tombstone

“Bates Motel” ended its five-season run with Norman’s (Freddie Highmore) poetic death last Monday night, and one of the interesting things that viewers spotted in the series finale was Norman’s blank tombstone.

During Monday’s “Bates Motel” finale screening and Q&A with reporters, TVLine asked Highmore what he would have had engraved into his character’s tombstone. And surprisingly, the actor’s answer couldn’t be more ordinary. “Norman Bates: He was a nice guy,” Highmore replied after smiling and pausing briefly to think.

In a couple of interviews following the airing of the finale, executive producer Kerry Ehrin explained why there’s nothing engraved into Norman’s tombstone except for his name and date of death, while his mother, Norma (Vera Farmiga), got a novel on hers.

READ: Why did Norman have to die in “Bates Motel” finale?

“Dylan (Max Thieriot) is, I’m sure, the person who made the tombstone, and given that Norman was a serial killer I think it felt like the most respectful thing was to just put his name and [date of death] as opposed to, like, ‘Beloved son and brother,’” Ehrin explained to TVLine. “The real gift he gave him was putting him next to his mother.”

“If you think about it, Norman didn’t really … exist even in his own head outside of his mother, so it’s fitting she should have a novel and he should have a line,” Ehrin said in a separate interview with Variety.

“Dylan was trying to sell the space to the Draft Kings, but they couldn’t work out a deal,” quipped Ehrin’s fellow executive producer Carlton Cuse.

In the series finale, Norman went home with Norma’s body after killing Romero (Nestor Carbonell) in the woods. In the final act of the episode, Norman threatened Dylan’s life, forcing the latter to shoot his brother with a gun, which ultimately reunited him with their mother in the afterlife.