‘Found’ Star Mark-Paul Gosselaar Debates If Sir Is a Killer

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Found Season 1 Episode 10, “Missing While Indoctrinated.”]

Did Sir (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) kill the one person who could have helped Gabi (Shanola Hampton as an adult, A’Zaria Carter as a teen) back when he was holding her in the farmhouse? According to him, in the latest episode of Found, no.

As seen in flashbacks, another one of Sir’s students, Stephanie “Annie” Lopez, saw Gabi in the farmhouse and said she’d come back for her. Then, Sir showed Gabi a red ribbon, matching the one in Annie’s hair, and said he stopped her from ruining their life. When Gabi, in the present-day as she keeps Sir chained in her basement, confronts him in “Missing While Indoctrinated,” promising to find where he buried Annie, he insists that he didn’t kill her. Should we believe him?

“I don’t know that you should, but speaking with the showrunner, Nkechi Okoro Carroll, I don’t think Sir is a killer,” Gosselaar tells TV Insider. “He kills other things in people, but not actually their lives. But I don’t know. There’s so many unknowns, really. I don’t know if Sir killed his mother, so I kind of take it back whether he killed Annie or not. I don’t know that I can trust that Sir didn’t kill anyone.”

But what you can believe is that you shouldn’t trust anything that Sir says. “Anything that comes out of his mouth, specifically with Gabrielle, is a complete game of manipulation. It’s all to control and to keep her in his life,” Gosselaar explains. “I think he’ll say and do anything for that to happen. I mean, he’s willing to live in this basement, which I feel he could have escaped at any moment, and he’s willing to do that, just to be in her presence, to just have a connection with her.”

It’s in this episode as well that Sir wonders, while discussing M&A’s case, why Gabi can’t see the humanity in him when she sees the possibility of redemption in the missing person. He kidnapped a child, she reminds him, and he points out she kidnapped a man. But he’ll never get redemption from her, she stresses, because their sins are not equal.

Sir does believe that he can be redeemed in Gabi’s eyes, Gosselaar confirms. “I have played it that way, that he does feel like he has saved her,” says the actor. “He thought that she needed his help, and he provided it to the best that he could do. He just had this fantasy in his head that he was her savior and that she needed to be saved, and that she didn’t have this relationship with her father. We’ll learn [about] her relationship with her father, and he’ll actually at one point admit that he embellished to her the poor quality of her relationship with her father.”

That being said, Gosselaar doesn’t think Sir’s looking for redemption necessarily. “It’s all because it’s for his needs and for his ways,” he says. “He’s doing everything just to be in her presence. I don’t think he helps her with the cases for redemption. If it made Gabrielle feel that he needed to be kept in that basement longer, he would say to her, ‘Yes, I’m doing it for redemption. I’m doing it to help you.’ But really, it’s all for him. It’s all for his selfish reasons.”

Watch the video above to hear Gosselaar talk about working with Hampton on their characters’ complicated dynamic in that basement.

Those aforementioned selfish reasons and being around Gabi are also why, despite an earlier threat regarding Lacey (Gabrielle Walsh) — she’s the other girl he’d kidnapped (Bella), then Gabi had saved along with herself — for destroying his “family,” he really wouldn’t hurt her.

“He absolutely despises Lacey — Bella — for ruining the relationship that he had with young Gabrielle. I think he absolutely wanted to travel the world with Gabrielle, and then Bella got in the way and the escape happened because he brought her into the relationship. But again, I think it’s all about manipulation,” according to Gosselaar. “It’s all based on how Gabrielle reacts to his words, and yeah, he just will flip-flop to preserve this connection.”

However, if he were to be in the same room as Trent (Brett Dalton), Gabi’s on-again, off-again love interest he heard her let into her house, all bets are off. “Given the opportunity to extinguish Trent, he probably would,” Gosselaar admits, though, “again, we go back to the killing, right? I don’t know what he’s capable of. I don’t know if he’s capable of having murdered his mother or if he murdered Annie. I don’t know. I always say that Sir is capable of anything, so I don’t put it past him, and I don’t put it past him, given the opportunity that he would do the same to Trent.”

If Sir isn’t a killer, would he kidnap Trent or Lacey to take them out of the picture for a period of time? Not necessarily. “I understand to a certain extent why he kidnapped Gabrielle, and we’ll see that later on in the season. We see the infatuation that he had with Gabrielle and for the qualities that she possessed that he was attracted to. I don’t know that he’s the type of person that just kidnaps,” the actor explains. “I play Sir that he finds Trent to be ‘heavy boots.’ That’s basically saying the big dumb guy upstairs; there’s nothing that Trent could offer Sir that would keep him interested.”

He continues, “Gabrielle, he finds absolutely brilliant and beautiful and just a spirit and a soul that he wants to be around and enjoy.” That’s not true when it comes to Trent or Lacey. The latter “was kidnapped for the benefit of Gabrielle, but not for Sir’s benefit. It would only extend Gabrielle’s time in the past. That was the whole intent for Bella, not because he thought Bella was in any way or shape or form like Gabrielle.”

But remember: Sir is all about manipulation. So how much should we believe?

Found, Tuesdays, 10/9c, NBC