Greg Berlanti discussed last week’s episode of Supergirl, including the scenes with Alex coming out:
“It didn’t start with, ‘Oh we want one of the characters to come out. Which one should it be?'” executive producer Andrew Kreisberg told E! News. “It really came out of exploring Alex and finding out how we can go deeper with Alex this season, what makes her tick and what drives her. Why is she the person she is? It made sense for Alex, as opposed to this sort of mandate that we had to do this.”
As Kreisberg explained, this revelation is going to allow for a happier, more fulfilled Alex—and that’s a good thing. “I’ve always loved Alex as a character and part of that is there’s always been this twinge of sadness about her, which I don’t think I or anyone could ever quite put their finger on,” he told us. “And this season, we’re really getting at that. And the notion that Alex is going to be truer to herself and come out and be able to lead a full and complete and happy life, if you love Alex, then you love that this is happening for her because it means she’s going to be happy in a way that she wasn’t able to be before.”
He also discussed the other major revelation in last week’s episode:
Can we trust Lana (Katie McGrath) now that we know what her mama’s up to?
“I want you to not be sure. I think that’s what’s most interesting, that you don’t know where Lena stands or whose side is she on. She does have this very powerful name, and it’s a name that connotes death and destruction and mistrust. We sort of say in a later episode, Kara was lucky enough to be adopted by the Danvers, this beautiful, loving family. And Lena was adopted by these monsters. How much is nature versus nurture makes up the suspense of these next few episodes. And the season.”
Andrew Kreisberg has more on Supergirl, including shooting down a fan theory about the upcoming Cyborg Superman episode.
Supergirl wasn’t the only show in the Berlantiverse to apparently have a big revelation. Arrow seemed to give the identity of Prometheus. I suspected misdirection when viewing the scene, and Buddy TV is even more adamant that Quenton cannot be Prometheus. We shall see how this all turns out over the course of the season.
Stephen Amell and Marc Guggenheim discussed the future of Arrow, including what Oliver’s fate should be and how long the show might go on:
Whenever Arrow decides to enact its endgame, should Oliver pay a price for his practice of taking other lives in the name of vengeance and justice, law and order? “It’s a great question,” says Guggenheim. “There’s an element of this show that’s very Sons of Anarchy to me, which had a similar question: Was there any redemption to be had for Jackson?” (If you don’t know how things ended for the outlaw biker played by Charlie Hunnam, we won’t spoil it for you. Get thee to Netflix!) “I will say that I have a very specific notion as to how I would like to see the series end.”
But Amell does believe Arrow has reached a crossroads. “I do really believe that this season is sort of a throw-down-the-gauntlet year for us, where we’re either going to do what we do and do it well or it’s the last year,” he says. “If we find that magic formula — which is not magic, it’s just hard work and playing to your strengths — then the show could go on for a really long time.”
The CW Network must be happy with the rebooting of Legends of Tomorrow. The season has been extended from thirteen to seventeen episodes.
CW has released the above promo of the crossover event involving Supergirl, Arrow, The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow, which starts November 28.
NBC also had an episode with a big revelation–which might also be misdirection. TV Line looks at whether Red really is Liz’s father on The Blacklist.
CBS is considering a spinoff of The Big Bang Theory entitled Sheldon. It would be a prequel about Sheldon Cooper at age 12.
I had contemplated having a longer section on the reaction of people in the entertainment industry to the election of Donald Trump but do not have time for that now. I will save the post-election material for another date, but do highly recommend the video below. Benedict Cumberbach presented The Tale of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election before the results were in, while visiting James Corden. The video mocks both Clinton and Trump. I purposely am not giving examples of the lines in the tale so they can be enjoyed as the story is told, but if you insist upon reading about it first, you can check here.
The Mirror reports that the BBC wants Doctor Who to feel like”a brand new show” with the upcoming change in showrunner.
BBC bosses want Doctor Who to feel like “a brand new show” under incoming boss Chris Chibnall… so we can expect a whole new line-up in 2018.
Insiders say the Broadchurch writer will have a “clean slate” to start afresh for his first series – rather bad news for actress Pearl Mackie, who plays new assistant Bill in Steven Moffat’s last run, currently filming for next year.
Pearl, 29, yet to be seen by viewers, is said to have been signed on a one-year contract and is expected to depart with Peter Capaldi , 58, and Moffat after 2017’s Christmas special.
The replacement Time Lord is likely to be played by a younger actor in a bid to help boost the flagging sales of dolls, books, DVDs and toys.
Our source says: “BBC management wants a return to the format from the David Tennant era, when you had a dashing male lead and young female companion.
“Merchandising has dropped off sharply in recent years and there is a strong desire to boost the show’s popularity among kids.”
This season has become a huge season for time travel, and this is reflected in most of the items today. One time travel series,Legends of Tomorrow has been rebooted, and the second episode was much more fun with the addition of The Justice Society of America. I had an introduction to its members last week. Marc Guggenheim discussed the meeting between the Legends and Justice Society in the video above.
Another aspect of the episode was the elevation of Sara Lance to the leader of the group, at least while Rip Hunter (Arthur Darvill) is missing. Marc Guggenheim spoke with Entertainment Weekly about how she handles her new role, along with some teasers about Rip:
“As you start to see her become more and more comfortable in being the leader of this rag-tag group, it’s so much fun to watch her,” EP Marc Guggenheim says. “The character’s embodying the role of a leader, Caity’s performance really embraces it. It turns out to be one of the most successful things we’ve done in season 2.” However, the next mission under her command won’t necessarily be to hunt down Rip Hunter. “That’s going to be something that’s always going on in the background, and in some cases the foreground, of the various episodes,” Guggenheim says. “To a certain extent, we don’t want to change the mission statement from fixing aberrations to going and saving Rip. The bat has been taken out of their hands because there’s no way to find Rip, so what would they do? You will find out [what happened to Rip] before the Legends do.”
The Flash began the season with Flashpoint based upon ramifications of Barry going back in time to save his mother. Todd Helbing, executive producer of The Flash, explained why Flashpoint was only in one episode when it was a much bigger story in the comics:
“I think anytime you do a story like Flashpoint, something as iconic as that, with the character restrictions that we had, it’s going ot be different than everybody expected,” executive producer Todd Helbing told ComicBook.com. “I think for us from a story point, when we talked about it originally it was going to be more episodes but what happens more often than not is that when you break the story you find that it would be a lot better and a lot more satisfying if you pulled up a lot of that information and put it in that first episode….It just became a much stronger episode if we just made it one as opposed to four or five, and then we could really kickstart the rest of the season after that. But Flashpoint or not, there are consequences going forward for Barry for what he did and those ripples he’s going to explore throughout the third season.”
The first cross over of the season was having Oliver Queen appear on the season premiere of Legends of Tomorrow, but a much bigger cross over is coming up. Marc Guggenheim has more information. The villain will be aliens called The Dominators. As for how Supergirl gets involved in events in our universe:
“Last year, Supergirl established that Flash was able to make his way to what I call Earth-CBS, and it stands to reason that, with the proper breach technology, the reverse can happen,” executive producer Marc Guggenheim told reporters Tuesday following a screening of this week’s Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow.
In the crossover, the heroes will team up to fight against the Dominators, who in the comics were a technologically advanced alien race that wanted to invade Earth and eliminate the threat posed by unpredictable metahumans — and they have similar motivations during the crossover. “Once the heroes realize that they’re up against aliens, they decide that they need an alien on their side,” Guggenheim says. “Fortunately, Barry knows a really nice one. I don’t think it’s a big shock that between Barry and Cisco, and all their experiences with Earth-2 and the multi-verse, that they can pluck her from Earth-CBS.”
Guggenheim also revealed that the crossover will actually kick off at the end of an episode of Supergirl, where Cisco (Carlos Valdes) and Barry (Grant Gustin) basically enlist Kara’s help. “Some people call it a four-way crossover because it involves four shows; my ulcer requires me to call it a three-part crossover,” Guggenheim explains. “The story that’s being told has a beginning, middle, and end: a beginning in Flash, a middle in Arrow, and an end in Legends. But Supergirl is very much a part of the whole thing, so we are crossing over four shows — four shows in three parts.”
Agents of SHIELD this year has combined the supernatural, the Inhumans, artificial intelligence, and the public reemergence if SHIELD. It looks like it would be helpful to be up to date on the comics to keep straight how this all fits together, especially with Doctor Strange to be released soon. Screen Rant explained how The Darkhold/Book of Sins fits into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
When Cumberbatch was asked how he saw Doctor Strange fitting into the largest Marvel Cinematic Universe, the actor strayed away from talking specifics to avoid any undue spoilers. However, he did say the sorcerer would be “all over the place.”
“There’s a lot going on this story [Doctor Strange] that will lead you to understand why he’ll play a key role in the next phase,” Cumberbatch explained.
The actor also talked about how he felt now playing Doctor Strange. Cumberbatch said, “Obviously, you want to bring the character to life and tell this really incredible story.”
He continued and stressed that the character’s story is only started in Doctor Strange. “It’s only be the end of the film that you go, ‘Oh my god, this is the beginning.’ It’s an origin story of a superhero that’s going to be part of all of [the MCU].”
12 Monkeys was one of the top time travel shows of the past two seasons, and will add a real veteran of the time travel genre for its third season. Back to the Future star Christopher Lloyd will play the Pallid Man’s father. Showrunner Terry Matalas has more information on the upcoming season in an interview with Blastr:
What can you tell us about how Season 3 is coming along? Logistically how’s it going (as far as shooting, etc.), and creatively what are some things you’re looking to explore?
Matalas: We’ve just started production – right now, I’m surrounded by a small army of incredible cast and crew – but creatively, conceptually, thematically the season’s all there. Last season we really wanted to explore the biology — the psychology – of Time. We wanted to tell a big, ambitious, sprawling time-travel story that ended with a very intimate, heart-wrenching reveal. This season, it’s about going inward.
The stakes are deeply, deeply personal for Cassie and Cole. It’s really the a real time travel dilemma, the fundamental question: “If you knew that your child would one day grow to be the Devil, would you – could you – kill him?” Or is there another way? And what that struggle does to our characters as a team – to Cole and Cassie as a couple – how it divides and unites them – is going to make for some remarkable drama. In some ways it’s a more linear season, and in others, it’s more complex than ever.
What can you tell us about the opportunity to land Lloyd for this new role? Why is he the man for the job?
Matalas: The fantastic thing about this character is that it’s not even remotely stunt casting. Certainly, when you make a time-travel show, you carry an obvious list of influences – Back to the Future, Doc Brown, Marty McFly – but when you cast that show, you never want the actor to distract from the moment. It’s difficult to tell a story or create an emotion if you’re constantly winking at the audience. We aim for levity, sure, but we never put the bullseye on “meta.”
So when we came to this particular character – with this particular set of traits – with this particular heritage – Christopher Lloyd was not only an inspired choice, he was the right choice. Put a photo of Lloyd against a picture of Tom Noonan and there’s zero difficulty imagining them as father and son.
I finally had a chance to check out one of the new time travel series, Timeless, over the weekend. It is certainly not hard science fiction, but it was fun. After watching the first, I did want to immediately watch the other two episodes available. The explanation of how they travel through time was probably under a minute, mainly showing them folding over a sheet of paper as an illustration of how they move from one point to another. They showed by the end of the first episode that events in the past can be changed, and that this can and will impact events in the present. A small ship, which is no bigger on the inside than it is on the outside, holds a three person crew. They quickly dispensed with the idea of going back a few minutes earlier if their first attempt at fixing events in the past didn’t work with ominous warnings of severe consequences if they run into themselves. No mention if a different set of time travelers could go back if they don’t get it right the first time. So far the people in charge haven’t minded the minor changes (from their perspective) from the trips back in time.
Producers Eric Kripke (Supernatural, Revolution) and Shawn Ryan (The Shield),discussed the rules of time travel and other aspects of the show with (including a spoiler for those who have not seen the pilot) with Film:
Is there a butterfly effect every time they go back? Maybe not as drastic as in the pilot, but just being there changes things.
Ryan: Hopefully a lot of times our heroes will be successful and there won’t be any discernible effect. Sometimes there will be. One of our rules is whenever we can, if there’s a change, can it be specific and personal? The best example of that is the pilot when Lucy’s sister vanishes from the timeline. But we also can use it for comedic effect. I won’t give away too much but I think there’s a change in history after the German WWII episode that tickles my funny bone a lot.
We talk a lot about what the changes are going to be. The thing you have to remember is the only people that are truly aware of these changes are the three people that have this institutional knowledge that go away and then come back and find things are different. For everyone living in that world, that’s just the way the world is. For all we know, we know the world the way we know it but somebody could come right now and say, “This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be, guys.” For the audience, our heroes’ job is to preserve a recognizable reality. Things aren’t going to get too crazy and too weird if our heroes do their job. That said, there are going to be times where they can’t control everything and Flynn’s going to do some damage. They’ll come back and something will be different. But the goal is for our heroes to make sure the world stays recognizable.
You don’t have to go that far back to find time periods that aren’t good for black people or women. Is it different in every time they go back to? 100 years and it’s before women’s suffrage, further and it’s still during slavery.
Kripke: Yeah, we are not going to shy away from the reality of what it was like to be African-American or a woman in those time periods. It’s the truth of who these characters are and we don’t want to stylize it or sugarcoat it. One of the goals of the show is to present history as accurately as we can. That said, an incredible amount of history is from the perspective of rich white dudes. There were entire communities of African-Americans throughout all of history. There’s going to be certain doors that our two white characters cannot go through and Rufus can. We’re interested in illuminating some corners and stories in history that haven’t been told, some peoples’ history. Same for women before the suffragette movement and they had incredible challenges but they also had an incredibly sophisticated world of interpersonal relations that in a lot of ways wasn’t recorded by mainstream history. There’s aspects and corners of that world that we can explore too. So I don’t think it’s going to be a one-trick pony of every episode, Rufus confronts racism and Lucy confronts male chauvinism. I think the tapestry is a lot more complicated than that and we have every intention of depicting that.
The Doctor Who spin-off Class premiered on BBC 3 yesterday and will be on BBC America this spring. Peter Capaldi appeared in the first episode. Screen Rant has a spoiler free review of the premiere. They have more on the show, with mild spoilers, here. Plus here are seven reasons to watch Class.
We still have a long wait for the main show. Cultbox summarizes everything we know so far about the upcoming season of Doctor Who with quite an extensive list of links.
Nerdophiles has news from the New York Comic Con on the second season of The Man In The High Castle.
Digital Spy reports on the threat which brings together the heroes of the four Berlantiverse DC shows on CW. Trailer above.
There’s only one army in the DC Comics universe terrifying enough to unite Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow.
Turns out that the threat of meta-humans running wild has raised the ire of planets across the galaxy, causing an alien race to form its own coalition in order to conquer and subjugate earth’s superheroes.
“This year, for our mega Arrowverse crossover, we’re taking inspiration from a DC crossover from the late 1980s known as Invasion!, which featured an alien race called the Dominators, who’d previously vexed the Legion of Superheroes,” Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow producer Marc Guggenheim revealed in a statement.
“We’re using cutting edge prosthetics and computer effects to achieve a feature film-quality look which is faithful to Invasion! artist Todd McFarlane’s interpretation of the characters.”
The Dominators made their first appearance in the pages of DC Comics all the way back in 1967, and have continued to cause trouble for the Legion of Super-Heroes and others within the DC Universe ever since.
This autumn’s four-night event will be the first of two major DC crossovers. Supergirl and The Flash will also be meeting up for a musical episode that’s sure to be interesting.
Supergirl also teams up with her cousin in the above trailer.
The Mary Sue reports that Lynda Carter Used Hillary Clinton As Inspiration For Her Upcoming Role on Supergirl. Hopefully this doesn’t mean that the president on Supergirl will engage in regime change in other countries based upon dubious arguments and sell influence from the White House.
Related story at Paste: Whitewashing Hillary: When Lena Dunham and Her Celebrity Ilk Become Dangerous. Obviously celebrities are hardly the people who we should trust with political analysis, but of course they are going to give their opinion. J.J. Abrams and many a long list of people involved in Star Trek have taken a stand against Donald Trump in a long open letter on Facebook. Unfortunately they also have fallen for the whitewashing of Hillary, and fail to recognize the importance of third party options. Trump is a celebrity in his own right, including The Apprentice and the recent revelation of his appearance in a softcore pornPlayboy video.
Netflix has released Luke Cage. There is some background information in the Marvel 101 video above. I haven’t had time to watch it yet and hope to start next weekend. Speakeasy has some information on the series:
Showrunner and writer Cheo Hodari Coker (“Ray Donovan,”“Southland”) talked to Speakeasy about the show and shared some key details that will make “Luke Cage” different than “Daredevil” and “Jessica Jones,” its Marvel predecessors on Netflix.
It takes place after “Jessica Jones,” but it’s all about Luke’s perspective.
The super-strong, nearly indestructible Luke Cage showed up as a butt-kicker and love interest during the first season of “Jessica Jones,” alongside series star Krysten Ritter. Yet, while “Luke Cage” will build on that foundation, it will be told through his perspective. “It doesn’t take away from the Luke you meet in Jessica Jones, but we’re telling a different story,” Coker says. “At the same time, I’m hoping people who see the show that like Luke from ‘Jessica Jones’ like what we’ve done in expanding the character.”
It aims to be the Tribe Called Quest of superhero shows.
The show’s cast is mostly made up of black actors, but Coker, who is also black, wanted to make sure it’s also representative of black culture, while keeping it relatable to all audiences. “I wanted to show it was possible that it had a deeply African-American context but do it in such a way that people who weren’t necessarily from hip-hop culture, or from black culture, and watch the show feel as though they’re part of the conversation,” he says. Coker points to A Tribe Called Quest’s albums as examples of art that both maintained its integrity within the context of black culture and still registered crossover success.
It draws on all sorts of Marvel Comics traditions.
Coker says Brian Michael Bendis‘s “Alias” comics have inspired the look of this Luke Cage, while much of the character’s origin story on the show comes directly from the 1972 comic “Luke Cage, Hero for Hire” No. 1. The showrunner, though, says a variety of Marvel Comics — from Chris Claremont and Frank Miller‘s Wolverine to X-Men comics in general — helped him develop his skills as a writer and dramatist in the televsion world. He says the issue-by-issue run in a comic book story line works well for TV. “That’s kind of the way you structure the season,” Coker says.
More information at TV Guide for before viewing. This article at TV Guide looks like it will be of interest after viewing.
Amazon recently began showing a pilot for The Tick, which started as a comic and was also briefly on television in the past. It has been picked up for to start as a series in 2017. CBR,com interviewed creator Ben Edlund:
CBR News: Ben, the new “Tick” pilot is something of an outlier as it’s rare for creator-owned comics to get a second big media adaptation let alone a third one. And I know this particular project took a long time to come together and had many twists and turns along the way. What was it like for you to go through that process of bringing the character to TV over a decade since the last go round?
Ben Edlund: It was, I would say, some of the scarier work I’ve done recently. [Laughs] This is a very specific character for me. I have a lifelong relationship with this creature, and so to engage with another expression of it and take the chances of messing it up or what have you, it makes you feel like it’d be pretty nice to just let it sit there. This is something I take very seriously, and I didn’t want to do this if it didn’t have a new reason for being and if it wasn’t something that wasn’t its own new thing on top of being another respectful chapter in the existence of this blue creature.
So that put the stakes up pretty high for me. And working with Amazon, we kind of started in a place that was quite distant from where we ended up. There was a lot of growth over the drafts we did, and I had to take time to figure out how to engineer a superhero live-action comedy in a way that would not be immediately ephemeral. It had to be something you could care about. So it was a very daunting bit of work for me.
I was very much the beneficiary of the 13 years I’ve spent working in live-action television. When I first did this, I had no experience other than some film school experience and cartoon experience. Now I’ve been doing this for a long time and working almost exclusively in this hybrid between drama and comedy. That started with “Firefly” and “Angel,” but with “Supernatural” and even “Gotham” and “Powers” – all of them incorporate elements of other things. That’s been a craft I’ve been drawing from and trying to learn about because I did actually feel like eventually it would be appropriate to look at Tick again and try to do something new with it.
And I didn’t know where that would be or when it would take shape. I didn’t even initiate the first ripple that led to this series. That was actually Patrick Warburton and Barry Josephson and others. It just kind of encompassed me, and it was time. It was ready to happen again. So when they came to me and asked if how I could conceive of it being doable in live-action, it took a long time to get my head around it.
Aside from your place as the creator coming back to his creation, the really interesting thing about the new Tick is that the superhero media landscape is vastly different than it was 15 years ago. For a long time, comics was the landscape where you could do anything and get deeper and weirder, while TV was much more restrictive. Now mass superhero media is bigger and weirder than it’s ever been. How has that changed your approach?
I think #1 right now is we’re at a point of superhero saturation. No one could have predicted how comprehensive it would be and how pervasive it would be. And so the level of education per capita [that the audience has] on the minutia of a superhero universe offers a lot more latitude in terms of joke material – because there’s just more to reference. That’s one part of it. The other part is that we’re the beneficiaries of technology. Big effects are a lot more achievable now, and so our vision is wider. That’s a great tool to have.
But I think the thing that’s most intriguing and interesting is that the whole complexion of television has changed. It’s gone from where we sort of anti-serialized stories and promoted the stand-alone ones to where things are completely engaged with the experience of serialization. People want that from these “binge vehicles.” What they want is a novel in televised form which is shaped and conceived as novels are. Those are not things that are free jazz improvisations as a general rule. They’re stories. It’s a demand that’s increasing with our appetite, and I’m happy about that because that’s the thing I want to do. I don’t want it to just be jokes. And nobody else wants that either, which is weird. The conventional wisdom of almost any other era of television was that we’d reduce things to just jokes. But this is a very different organism, and I’m intrigued by the experiment.
Nerdist has a video report providing information on the television adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s novel American Gods. Screenrant summarized some of the key points, including:
Nerdist News went deep with the cast and crew of American Gods and discovered that the series will follow a path somewhat different from the novel that inspired it. Far from being a true diverging, however, Nerdist reports that the series will not only cull from the near 600-page edition of Gaiman’s text, but also from the author’s character and plot notes, many of which either didn’t make it in, or were merely alluded, to in the novel.
According to Nerdist, much of the expanded story will follow the tales of how the Old Gods came to dwell on American soil. While the novel does tell the stories of how gods like Kristin Chenowith’s Easter and Orlando Jones’ Mr. Nancy left their original homes for our shores, the series is expected to dive even deeper into these character backstories to create a richer, more full universe.
Considering how well Bryan Fuller re-imagined the Hannibal books and movies, I am optimistic he will do a good job with American Gods, especially he will be working with ideas also created by Neil Gaiman.
NBC has picked up This is US for a full eighteen-episode season.
FX reports that The Strain will conclude with season four. FXX has renewed You’re The Worst for a fourth season.
There reportedly will be a a superhero character appearing in this year’s Doctor Who Christmas Special.
DigitalSpy held a contest in which David Tennant’s 10th Doctor was voted the best TV character of the 21st century
ScreenRant has some videos to introduce the Doctor Who spinoff Class.
The Emmy Awards last week had a couple of pleasant surprises with Tatiana Maslany winning for Lead Actress in a Drama Series (Orphan Black) and Rami Malek winning for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series (Mr. Robot). Malek accepted his award acting like his television character in saying, “Please tell me you’re seeing this too.” Other wins for genre shows include the expected wins for Game of Thrones, along with Sherlock: The Abominable Bride winning for best TV Movie.
Mr. Robot concluded its second season last week, but unfortunately the season was not up to the level of the first. Perhaps it has problems comparable to the second movie in a trilogy, leaving cliffhangers without the dramatic events which concluded the second season. Sam Esmail discussed the finale with The Hollywood Reporter:
The climax of the finale comes before the final scene: Tyrell shooting Elliot. It effectively ends the argument about whether Tyrell is still real or imagined by Elliot. How important was it to you to definitively answer that question by the end of season two?
That was, to me, the season’s arc. After Elliot’s head-trip, that he goes inside himself and inside this illusion that he uses to cope with the fact that he’s been in prison and inside all of this battle and all of the battles he’s had with Mr. Robot, it’s like the game is over. Elliot has to snap back to reality and literally, it happens with a gunshot, with a bang, by Tyrell.
It brings the season full circle, too, with Mr. Robot repeatedly shooting Elliot in the head in season one, and of course the gun in the popcorn at Coney Island. Chekov rules dictate that this gun had to go off at some point.
Exactly. And it was imperative that this was the defining real — and I kind of want to underline that (laughs) — moment for Elliot, because he’s actually been shot twice in the show now. He was shot in episode four of the first season in that fever dream hallucination, and was obviously continually shot in the beginning of this season. This one, we wanted to make it feel very different.
Mr. Robot tells Elliot that he’s willing to go “all the way.” Apparently, that means allowing himself to be shot. Throughout the series, Mr. Robot has always read as an entity very much interested in self-preservation. What does it say about Mr. Robot and his commitment to the cause that he’s willing to make a sacrifice play?
It redefines the stakes. Mr. Robot was all about self-preservation. Up until this point, that kind of included Elliot, because obviously self-preservation includes Elliot’s body, if you look at it that way. Now? All bets are off. In fact, everything to him is about the plan, and he’s willing to die for this cause. That’s how extreme his passion is for this whole project, for this whole revolution. It kind of realigns the stakes for us. Now Elliot cannot even trust his life with Mr. Robot, which happens to also be Mr. Robot’s life. It also raises the stakes in terms of the extremes Mr. Robot is willing to go through in order to pull off this plan. It’s two different levels that have been kick-started and raised a lot higher for next season…
Esmail discussed the structure of each season,the return of Tyrell, and the cliffhangers in Season 2 with Entertainment Weekly:
So let’s dive in, by the end of the episode, we’re seeing what Stage Two is — or at least what a part of Stage Two is. When was the concept of what Stage Two would be brought up in the writers room? Was that discussed hand-in-hand with how season 1 ended?
That was actually brought up in the writers room — if you can believe it or not — during the first season. That was something that was worked out in my head when I was just thinking about the feature. It was intentionally in that feature stage. We obviously talked about it in the writers room, but if the endgame of the first season was hacking Evil Corp, the endgame of the second season would be to take down their paper records. Once you take down their digital property, you would know that they would then try to rebuild the database and go to analog. That would be the executional plan for the season 2 arc. The way we kind of went about it in the second season was very, very roundabout. One thing that I knew heading into the second season — knowing that was our endgame — was that I did not want this to feel like this was the first season redux: Here’s the new plan, here’s the new arc of the season, here’s the new plot, so let’s watch our guy struggle and figure out how to bring down the building where they’re housing all of these paper records. Going through the conversations, we talked a lot about how to really keep it with Elliot’s storyline and his emotional journey, his struggles with Mr. Robot. We thought that was the most authentic and organic next step to Elliot’s journey anyway. After the big realization, he’s not just going to ignore that and continue on with the plot. That’s how it all folded up with the structure that we came up with for the second season…
Tyrell came back into the picture last week, long after we expected him. What was the conversation like when deciding at which point he reenters?
The decision to keep him out of the season had a lot to do with Elliot. Like I said, going into the second season, we wanted to have Elliot reconcile this relationship with Mr. Robot. He made this damning realization about himself at the end of the first season. Any notion of dismissing that in an episode or two — “Oh, I’m seeing this hallucination, and sometimes he takes over. Okay, now let’s move on and get to the plot” — felt completely disingenuous. It honestly always felt to us that the only way Elliot could proceed is to get into this battle with Mr. Robot, to reconcile how he’s going to live with this, how he’s going to negotiate with this, how he’s going to work through this. That all was predicated on Tyrell’s absence, because once he comes back in, it blows up the whole thing. Whether Mr. Robot lied to Elliot or what he withheld from him, all of the sudden, the show becomes about that and the plot machinations of that and not about what Elliot’s emotionally going through in terms of this serious disorder that he’s discovered about himself. Tyrell’s absence was a byproduct of what we felt Elliot’s journey needed to be for the entire season. Once we Tyrell came in, it went back to those plot machinations, folding Elliot back into the overarching journey of the revolution.
Season 2, arguably, has a bigger cliffhanger than season 1. What do you think are the big questions fans are going to be asking heading into season 3?
I think the one big one will be “What happened to Angela? Has she really been flipped? Or is she now playing some other motivation?” And I think that’s great. I know that people sometimes get frustrated that we leave Angela’s motivations in the dark, but I think that’s what adds to the intrigue of her. That’s why I’m so continually fascinated by her character: You can’t quite nail her down to which side she’s playing. It feels like she’s always playing both sides. I think that’s going to be a big question.
What else? Obviously, Leon and the coda and what will become of our affable heroes, Mobley and Trenton. Darlene and what will become of her relationship with Dom and how that will transpire, especially as that relates to Elliot. I think those will be the questions, but the fans and all of the viewers have always surprised me with the questions they ask. Sometimes they’re questions I didn’t even think we were asking.
Here are a couple of excerpts from an interview which Vulture held with Sam Esmail:
MZS: Why did you make the decision to delay the revelation of the real nature of Mr. Robot until late in the first season, and why did you wait to confirm that Elliot was in fact behind bars in the second season? Why didn’t you just let us in on that from the beginning?
SE: We talked about that. We said, okay, let’s just tell the audience, right? And then he’ll be in prison and then he’ll imagine it away and go into his reprogramming mind, similar to what we did in the pilot. And then someone was like — that someone was probably me [laughter] — what if we didn’t tell the audience? Okay, all right, what does that mean? What do we get out of that? Is there some added value to that, and if not, we shouldn’t do it.
I started looking at it as, well, if we start hinting something is going to be off here, we’re not going to hide it that well. It’s gotta be real. It’s gotta be like, no, there is something a little off, we’re hinting at it, we’re really in his coping mechanism, what Elliot would do, but the audience is going to sense it and is going to maybe predict it, maybe not. I mean, I didn’t really know, but I didn’t really care either way.
In our show, reality becomes our subtext. So if you have a scene with two characters, one of them loves the other, it’s more interesting for that person to hate that person on the surface but subtextually you feel, oh, well that person actually loves them. And you sense that maybe or maybe you don’t, and then you’re surprised when that comes out. Either way, there is another layer of engagement. It’s a lot more interesting. If everybody is saying on-the-nose dialogue to each other, if everything is on the surface, that becomes less intriguing, that doesn’t let me engage on it on a level that I think could be deeper and richer.
We have this opportunity with our character, who is obviously narrating to us and considers us a friend, felt betrayed by us the first season. What if he feels like, well, I’m gonna lie back, I’m gonna withhold from you and I’m not gonna tell you everything. I mean, I’ve not seen this done before, but now we’re developing this weird relationship with the audience. Whether you saw the prison coming or not, that’s not the point. The point is that now you’re having this subtextual relationship with him that you didn’t have in the first season. And then to add that now, under the unreliable narrator device, not only do we see it through his eyes, but he could also be lying to you. That’s another storytelling device that we could throw in…
GE: You’ve talked about how the Arab Spring has inspired the show a bit in terms of the theme of revolution. And, along those lines, this season we see the revolution not working out. But it’s also a very American story in how it focuses on what it feels like to be an outsider. Your star, Rami Malek, is Egyptian-American, as are you, and one of the members of fsociety, Trenton, is an Iranian-American. Are you partly trying to play on the feeling of being an immigrant in America, in terms of building the mood and tone of the show?
SE: Yeah. The thing about it is, when I made those choices, some of them in the screenplay, some of them in casting, which then inspired certain character choices, it was never to talk about it. Elliot is obviously of mixed race, his mother and father are different ethnicities, but we do not talk about it. Trenton, we dip our toe into it, but we do not talk about it, we let it just inform it.
And the reason why, and I did that very deliberately, because when I wrote Elliot I didn’t know, right? I didn’t know who it was gonna be and it didn’t really matter to me. And then when I cast Rami, who is obviously brilliant and perfect for the part, how do I reconcile his ethnicity — is he Egyptian, not Egyptian? I mean is there something here, should I be diving into that? And then I felt like there’s some reverse racism going on here. Wait a minute, I can’t cast Rami unless I address the fact that he is Egyptian in some way? I didn’t want that to now all of a sudden dictate anything about the character that would’ve happened had I cast someone white. But I couldn’t just ignore it either, right? Because it needed to inform who he was.
And then that’s when it grew out, what you were saying, this outcast status or this outcast look about him, that then felt intrinsic to how Rami plays Elliot and how potentially I wrote Elliot. And it all becomes a more subconscious choice. Even when I wrote the Trenton character, and I wrote her in as Iranian-American, I didn’t do that because I wanted to explore Iranian-Americans, I did that because I was thinking about what kind of people would join this group from all walks of life. I’m also kind of reflecting on my own reality, my own circle of friends … that this type of person felt that way, that it felt right to be in this group.
And so it all came from this really genuine place of what organically makes sense, what informs this character that I’m trying to write, or trying to come across in the best way without it being about like, okay, here is this really diverse cast. And honestly, I think that’s really important because one of the things I get worried about with this diversity thing that’s going on right now, I don’t want people to look at it as homework. I don’t want people to write something and say, well, now we’ve gotta make them black and we gotta make them Native American.
Another season of Mr. Robot is in the books. Now that it’s over, what, to you, were the ultimate goals and purpose of this season, as far as evolving the stories of Elliot, fsociety, E Corp, the Dark Army, and everyone else involved in this complicated web?
Ultimately, I believe we succeeded in creating a cohesive second chapter that organically fleshes out the world that fsociety essentially destroyed at the end of the first season. Elliot’s discovery of the Mr. Robot personality opened the door for us to experience his inner conflict and his longing to regain control of himself. Even though he enacted the 5/9 hack, him reconciling his relationship with Mr. Robot was at the top of his priority list. The quest for control and grip on reality is a large component of Elliot’s journey this season. The consequences and repercussions of the hack heavily influenced the other storylines. Price, Whiterose, Darlene, and Angela are all navigating this new world and are forced to confront questionable decisions they made previously.
In the finale, Stage Two is finally revealed, and it has fiery ramifications for Evil Corp. As best as you can, can you summarize what the plan involves, for those who haven’t yet wrapped their heads around it?
Rebuilding their records of loans and debt is the goal here. E Corp is transferring all of their paper financial records — titles, deeds, statements, transactions, credit records — to one of their processing facilities. Their plan is to digitize all of the paper content in an effort to recreate their databases. Knowing this, Elliot/Mr. Robot, Tyrell and the Dark Army have collaborated on a plan that would set off a large explosion in the datacenter of that processing facility. If they’re successful, anything stored in that building (paper documents included) would be destroyed. Stage Two is the logical next step of the original E Corp plan. Remember when Mr. Robot said that you have to take a conglomerate down limb by limb before they can unravel? The paper documents represent another one of E Corp’s limbs.
The Flash returns on October 4. The extended trailer above shows more about the Flash Point story.
Legends of Tomorrow will be much different next season–which is a good thing. Here is the synopsis of the first episode, which guest stars Stephen Amell and airs on October 13:
After the defeat of the immortal villain Vandal Savage and the exposure of the corrupt Time Masters, a new threat emerges. Dr. Nate Heywood (Nick Zano), an unconventional and charming historian, is thrust into the action. After making a shocking discovery, Nate seeks out Oliver Queen (guest star Stephen Amell) for help in finding the scattered Legends. Once reunited, the Legends continue their new mission to protect the timeline from temporal aberrations – unusual changes to history that spawn potentially catastrophic consequences. Their first stop is 1942 to protect Albert Einstein from being kidnapped before the Nazis destroy New York City with a nuclear bomb. Meanwhile, Ray (Brandon Routh) notices that Sara (Caity Lotz) has a mission of her own, which leads them both to face her nemesis, Damien Darhk (guest star Neal McDonough). Victor Garber, Arthur Darvill, Dominic Purcell and Franz Drameh also star. Dermot Downs directed the episode written by Marc Guggenheim & Phil Klemmer and Greg Berlanti & Chris Fedak.
One aspect of the upcoming season which is of interest, the Justice Society of America, is not seen in the trailer.
SciFi Now looks at ARQ, a time travel movie which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and is now available on Netflix.
The BBC is doing the obvious to get attention for the first episode of Class. Peter Capaldi will have a cameo. This will air on the BBC in October, and be paired with Doctor Who next spring in the United States.
In other Doctor Who related news, The Mary Sue looked at the controversy over what Karen Gillan’s Jumanji costume (picture above).
Maybe it is because I’m used to timey wimey plot lines, but I predicted the twist in This is Us well before it was revealed in the pilot. Now we will have to see where the show goes after this setup. I’m looking forward to checking out all the actual time travel shows premiering this season. There were three episodes of The Good Place, staring Kristen Bell and Ten Danson, last week. The comedy, which does have a genre aspect, was off to an entertaining start.
George Takei discussed Star Trek with Stephen Colbert. Video above. Nerdist reports:
Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the debut of the original Star Trek (well, in America at least: sorry to Canada that we didn’t do this two days earlier), so fittingly the tributes and odes were pouring in from fans around the globe. However, it was George Takei who best summed up what the franchise is really all about, and in doing so explained why it is so beloved and has endured for so long.
The O.G. Sulu was a guest of super nerd and Trekkie Stephen Colbert on The Late Show last night, and Takei shared his memories of the “very special” first time he went to work on the series, where franchise creator Gene Roddenberry described to him and the rest of the cast at their first table read what story the space adventure show was really telling.
“Gene explained to us what Star Trek was all about,” said Takei, “He said that the Starship Enterprise was a metaphor for Starship Earth, and the strength of this starship lay in its diversity coming together.” Roddenbery then explained that the possibilities of “infinity diversity in infinite combinations” (IDIC) would force the crew, representing the many people of the planet, to combine their abilities to solve problems as one.
Majel Barrett has had both on-screen roles and has been on multiple versions of Star Trek as the voice of the ship’s computer. Her voice was recorded phonetically before she died and there is talk of using her voice on Star Trek: Discovery, along with using it Siri-like virtual assistants. I want my Amazon Echo to use her voice!
Bryan Fuller continues to slowly provide hints about other aspects of Star Trek: Discovery. He tweeted than an episode from The Original Series, Balance of Terror, is a “touchstone” for Discovery’s story arc. The episode introduced the Romulans, and TrekMovie.com speculates on what this might mean.
Greg Berlanti is working on yet another superhero show, now Black Lightning for Fox.
IndieWire has interviewed Gregg Berlanti about his multiple superhero shows. He has news on several of them, including the cross-over episodes:
As “Supergirl” leaps to The CW, how has the network move – and the relocation to Vancouver – been going?
I just saw the director’s cut of the first episode, and I’m in as much love with the show as ever. It’s been challenging to figure out all the moving parts, moving the show across cities and across networks. But the reality is, I think the show is as strong as ever and it feels really seamless. People will not be able to tell that it’s not L.A. It feels like National City still. There are some new enhancements to the set that we were going to do anyway. Obviously some new characters are coming to the show that we would have brought in anyway to the second season. And so I’m really pleased. CBS in their own wisdom recognized it, there’s no part of the show that’s fighting itself anymore. It has a youthfulness and appeal because of the age of the leading lady, and it gets to embrace that a touch more.
What more can you tell us how often we’ll see Calista Flockhart’s character, Cat Grant?
She’s recurring. We’re trying to get her for at least six episodes this year, and she’s in the first two episodes. We’re just trying to see when she can come back now.
And will we see her interact with Superman?
I don’t want to give it away, but she has a special kind of dynamic with Clark Kent.
How far along is the “Supergirl”/”The Flash” musical crossover?
We just finished writing the fall crossovers. And now we’re trying to figure out how to produce them. That’s probably the most challenging thing we do all year. And now we’re doing it across three shows! But next week we’ll have to start talking about clearing music. I have a few ideas for tone and style in my head but we’re just starting to talk about what that can be. I do want to try and get an original piece of music written. As we make a deal on that we’ll probably make some announcements on the original songs.
Perhaps written by, I don’t know, Lin-Manuel Miranda?
[laughs] I would say, pretty close. I can’t say yet because we don’t have a deal yet, but I did speak to someone we’re really excited about. There are some writers I’m incredibly excited to work with.
Back to the big CW series crossover, how difficult is that to pull off across so many series?
You really are trying to run a single production across three different productions. But they’re run as three separate entities. We have to figure out when we’re borrowing one actor from where. We’re telling one cohesive story; “Supergirl” will participate, but the storyline doesn’t actively begin there. There are some characters who show up in her episode, but the story begins with “The Flash” episode and goes to “Arrow” and “Legends of Tomorrow.” We’re just getting into designing the bad guy for it, and we start now but it doesn’t air until the end of November. We will put a lot of time between now and then figuring out visual effects sequences. Just today I was holding the three scripts back-to-back – that’s 180 pages of material. It’s a three-hour story, almost a miniseries.
And when you place all three scripts together, it unlocks some sort of fortune.
[laughs] It’s very daunting when you hold them all together like that. Each one of these pages is 10 hours of shooting and a visual effects extravaganza. But hopefully it feels like a great kind of crossover comic book sell.
The Spoiler Room at Entertainment Weekly has news on several genre shows, including this about Felicity on Arrow:
Emily Bett Rickards has been training a lot lately. Does it mean Felicity will be involved in more action scenes in Arrow season 5? — Itakha
At first, Felicity will be dealing with the fallout of Havenrock’s destruction. “In the first five episodes, we face head-on the decision that Felicity made,” EP Marc Guggenheim says. “We are most definitely not ignoring it.” Following that, though, Guggenheim cryptically teases what could be Felicity jumping in on the action. “We’re positioning her to do something in the second half of the year that is really, really key, and that isn’t about her relationship with Oliver or even necessarily her father or her mother. It’s really new territory for her, and we’ve very excited about it. Some big things are going to happen with Felicity.”
I was pleasantly surprised to see Emily Bett Richards while watching Brooklyn last weekend. (Sorry, it was not a major role, and the movie, while excellent, is totally non-genre).
Agents of SHIELD has a promo for Ghost Rider. More at Screen Rant.
Hulu has picked up a sci-fi comedy entitled Future Man from Seth Rogen.
Vince Gilligan is producing a limited series for HBO on Jim Jones for HBO entitled Raven. My bet is that he will do a good job of showing Jones’ life, but after Breaking Bad I would prefer to see him invent more flawed characters of his own.
Netflix has renewed Narcos for season 3 and 4.
It appears that the next season of Doctor Who will start in April based upon reports in Radio Times and a comment from Peter Capaldi. Before that, there will also be the Christmas episode. Plus in November there will be an animated version of a lost story:
It’s one of the Doctor’s most celebrated adventures and yet no complete film recordings of The Power of the Daleks are known to have survived. The master negatives were destroyed in an archive purge in 1974.
BBC Worldwide has announced that a brand new black and white animation based on audio recordings of the programme using the original cast, surviving photographs and film clips will be released 50 years to the minute after its only UK broadcast on BBC One.
The six half hour episodes feature the regeneration, or as it was then called ‘renewal’, of First Doctor William Hartnell into Second Doctor Patrick Troughton, as the Time Lord and his companions Polly (Anneke Wills) and Ben (Michael Craze) do battle with the Daleks on the planet Vulcan.
Anne Hathaway told Variety she would live to play Catwoman again. That might be difficult as the Christopher Nolan Batman stories, where she appeared, have concluded, but that doesn’t entirely rule out her reprising the role in a future movie.
A few genre shows have already won awards last night at the Creative Arts Emmys. Winners included Jessica Jones (Outstanding Original Main Title Theme Music), Mr. Robot (Outstanding Music Composition For A Series), and Man In The High Castle (Outstanding Main Title Design and Outstanding Cinematography For A Single-Camera Series). Hopefully some of these series will also win some of the more major Emmy awards.
Captain America: Civil War, like the previous movie in the series, made major changes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe which also extend to Agents of SHIELD on television. Spoilers ahead for both the movie and television series. Civil War showed a continuation of what was seen in Captain America: Winter Soldier, which led to moving SHIELD underground. It ends not with Captain America being killed as in the comics, but with both giving up his shield and going underground. Other members of the Avengers are in similar situations. Collider summarizes how the MCU has changed, with major spoilers for those who have not seen the movie and recent episodes of Agents of SHIELD.
It did seem strange that Nick Fury was not involved, and his role since the changes in SHIELD remain unclear. Civil War writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely were asked about this by The Los Angeles Times:
I’m curious. Where was Fury?
Stephen McFeely: I’m curious too!
Christopher Markus: We called him, but he let the line blink. Primarily it felt like one too many possible opinions. We didn’t want him to take one side or the other, because that’s not his place in the universe. And then we didn’t want another, “Is he still with the government? Is he opposed to the government but supporting the government?” It got to be the potential for a lot more polemic discussion that the movie did not have room for.
He’s the guy who put it together. He’s been the sort of parent figure to the Avengers. Let the parent go away, and see if the kids can handle this. See if the kids can be who they’re supposed to be without that governing voice. Um… and they didn’t do that good of a job.
Are we going to see him in “Infinity Wars?”
McFeely: I would think.
Markus: It’s probably all hands on deck.
McFeely: Don’t you assume you’ll see everybody in the “Infinity Wars?”
You heard it here first: Everybody is in “Infinity Wars.” Hopefully that includes Sam Rockwell’s Justin Hammer and Whiplash’s bird.
Captain America: Civil War acted as the origin story for Black Panther, and introduced Spider-Man to the rest of the MCU. Iron Man will be appearing in Spider-Man’s upcoming solo movie, Spider-Man: Homecoming. There is also speculation that there is yet another connection, with “homecoming” being one of the trigger words used by Hydra in brainwashing Bucky Barnes.
Deadline has a long interview with Kevin Feige. One of the many items discussed included the possibility of Black Widow getting a solo movie in the future:
DEADLINE: You’ve got a bunch of characters in this movie from Falcon and War Machine and Black Widow and Hawkeye, who have so far guest starred in movies with another characters title above the fold. Is there one destined to get a solo movie down the line? FEIGE: We’ve announced the next nine movies, 10 counting Civil War, through the end of 2019. Where we go beyond that are ongoing discussions that we’ll focus on in the next few years because we have a lot to do before then. Of the characters that you’ve just mentioned I would say certainly the one creatively and emotionally that we are most committing to doing is Black Widow.
DEADLINE: Why? FEIGE: We think she’s an amazing character. We think Scarlett Johansson’s portrayal of her is amazing. She’s a lead Avenger and has amazing stories in her own right to tell that we think would be fun to turn into a stand-alone franchise.
Agents of SHIELD also worked in the Sokovia Accords, the movie version of the Superhero Registration Act, and ended the season with some deaths. Even Daisy now appears to be on the run, and who is this new Director of SHIELD? There was a second death for a Brett Walton villain, first Grant Ward, and now Hive. It looks like he might finally be finished with the series. Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen spoke with Comic Book Resources about the finale.
CBR News: How difficult was it to say goodbye to Brett Dalton and Lincoln Mitchell?
Maurissa Tancharoen: It was so, so hard. There were many tears. It was very emotional. Even in the process of developing their arcs and breaking the season, it was a decision we struggled to finalize. We knew that we had to, though. We had to close a chapter with Ward. To sustain an antagonist for this long or to go beyond three seasons — we just didn’t want it to lose any steam. At our wrap party, there were several emotional speeches being made for both of those guys.
Jed Whedon: One of the things about television is that it’s fluid. You always have to generate a lot of different stories. Sometimes you eliminate a character and it’s easy, because you either don’t like the person or you don’t like the character. This was a situation where we didn’t have that. Both of these actors are just great guys, they’re great to work with and are pros. It was a very emotional end of the season for everybody.
Tancharoen: A week before we wrapped, we were here at home. I was thinking of Brett and Luke. They are such great people, and so talented and so handsome. “Oh, my God. What have we done?”
After watching Ward evolve from a member of S.H.I.E.L.D., to Hydra agent, to Hive, why did it feel that this was the time to let him go?
Whedon: One of the reasons we closed that chapter was to start a very different, very new chapter next year. We’re very excited about it, but that’s as specific we can get.
Now that viewers have seen the finale, what were the most important aspects, to you, about the send-off you gave Ward/Hive?
Whedon: Hive revealed his motivation: “I want a connection.” That’s a fitting end to his story. Also, to Ward’s story, he wanted that with Skye. Now, here he is, sitting with Lincoln, the one person who had that with Skye/Daisy. There’s some poetry to the simplicity and the quietness in that moment that we loved. It was a fitting end for someone with [goals of] world domination, and to our buddy Grant Ward, who we managed to maintain as an antagonist for three seasons, which is a lot for one character.
While some themes from the movies are reflected in Agents of SHIELD, the two are also disconnected, especially with Coulson being alive in the television show but still considered dead in the movies. It is also strange that nobody from The Avengers got caught up in the battle against Hive. Chloe Bennet talked about this last week. When asked if she would like to show up in the movie universe she replied, “The Marvel Cinematic Universe loves to pretend that everything is connected, but then they don’t acknowledge our show at all. So, I would love to do that, but they don’t seem to keen on that idea.”
The Berlanti shows on CBS and the CW Network are almost completed for the season, with Arrow and The Flash presumably to complete their story lines related to Zoom and Damian Dahrk next week. Legends of Tomorrow remains the weakest of the four, but did improve in its final episodes. The good news was that it got more timey wimey. The bad news is that it handled their rules of time travel much more poorly than other genre shows such as Continuum and 12 Monkeys. As time travel does not really exist (which I assume as I have never received a list of winning lottery winners from my future self), a show can get away with their own rules, but they should be internally consistent and make sense. Screen Rant has more on the plot holes. More spoilers ahead.
It should help the show in the future to have Vandal Savage defeated. Having them spend the season getting close to him but not killing him led to many unsatisfactory episodes. Some old members of the cast will be gone. Ciara Renée is leaving as a series regular, but the manner in which Hawkgirl and Hawkman flew off certainly leaves open for the possibility of their return, even without using time travel. Wentworth Miller’s character Leonard Snart (Captain Cold) sacrificed his life on Legends of Tomorrow. In the Berlanti universe, death is not a permanent change (except for the Earth 1 Laurel Lance), and Miller will be a recurring character in various shows in the universe. Presumably time travel or effects from the destruction of the Oculus will provide the explanation.
While some characters are gone, the ending suggested the introduction of the Justice Society of America. Collider has background information on this. Marc Guggenhein also discussed this with The Hollywood Reporter:
The CW’s Legends of Tomorrow used Thursday’s season one finale to reveal that Rex Tyler aka Hourman (Patrick J. Adams), along with the JSA, would be a major part of the Arrow/Flash spinoff’s sophomore run. He arrived on a Waverider as the Legends team intended to take off as Time Masters, warning them that they would all die if they did.
“With his final words in the finale, he planted a pretty deep flag about where we’re headed in season two, which is not just introducing Hourman but introducing his teammates in the Justice Society of America,” executive producer Marc Guggenheim tells The Hollywood Reporter. “For comic book fans, everyone knows the Justice Society is really the precursor to the Justice League, so it’s a pretty big move in our DC universe here on TV.”
Although the DC Comics franchise keeps its film and television projects separate (unlike rival Marvel, which connects its film and TV projects in one shared universe), it’s interesting to note that it’s the newest — rather than the highest-rated DC show (Flash) — that is going to be the one introducing the iconic superhero team…
The introduction of Hourman and the JSA won’t be the only reason Legends of Tomorrow will look different in season two. Along with some casting shakeups, the elimination of the Time Council and the set timeline takes away a huge part of the story and the rules that were established all season long.”One of the other big things we’ve done in the season finale is we planted another flag in the form of Rip’s [Arthur Darvil] statement. Because the Time Masters are essentially gone and the Legends have destroyed the Oculus, that all means that someone else has to do the job of the Time Masters,” Guggenheim says. “Our Legends take that on as their new responsibility. It’s sort of like, you break it, you buy it.”
“That’s really exciting to us, that our team of Legends, our misfits, are going to be responsible for the preservation of the timeline and protection of history,” he adds. “As we’ve seen, our team, our guys are not always the most responsible people around so maybe time has got some new troubles. But it will provide a lot of fodder, a lot of fun story for season two.”
With Supergirl getting picked up by the CW Network, they didn’t waste any time in announcing plans for a four way crossover with Arrow, The Flash, and Legends of Tomorrow. This is facilitated by all four now being on the same network and all being filed in Vancouver starting next season. These matters are far more important then the logistics of getting Supergirl involved with characters who are on a different earth.
Above is a trailer for the movie Star Trek Beyond. It also looks like Paramount has been convinced that it is not a good idea to sue fans over copyright infringements in fan-made movies. JJ Abrams made this announcement:
A few months back there was a fan movie, Axanar that was being fan made, and there was this lawsuit between the studio and these fans. And Justin was sort of outraged by this as a longtime fan. And, we started talking about it and realized this was not an appropriate way to deal with the fans. The fans should be celebrating this thing, we all [as] fans are part of this world. So he went to the studio and pushed them to stop this lawsuit and now within the last few weeks it will be announced that this is going away and the fans will be able to [continue] their productions.
Hopefully they realize that it has been the fans who have kept interest in Star Trek alive, enabling them to make money from continued movies and soon a new television series.
CBS also released the above teaser for the upcoming Star Trek television series, which does not really provide any information. There has been some speculation that the statement of “new crews” in pleural might suggest more than one crew, possibly taking place in different eras.
The above trailer was released for season two of Mr. Robot which begins on July 13. We see that Christian Slater’s character is still around, and don’t know how much of anything else is real or in someone’s head.
With it doubtful that CBS will renew Limitless (but no cancellation announcement either), there is now talk of trying to sell it to another network. I don’t know if the finances would work, but it seems like it might be a good fit at USA Network. Supergirl has already moved from CBS to the CW Network, and I’m still hoping attempts to keep Person of Interest alive at anther network are successful.
Mars comes into opposition — the point when Mars and the Sun are on directly opposite sides of the Earth — once every two years.
But on Sunday night, as the Red Planet edged towards its closest point to Earth in 11 years, it appeared much bigger and brighter in the night sky than usual.
Amateur astronomer Dr Ian Musgrave, from the University of Adelaide, said it would trump Venus as the brightest object in the sky, aside from the Sun and the Moon.
It looks like many shows think that they can duplicate the success of Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead by killing off characters. There are more major spoilers this week. Recent posts have already dealt with character deaths, and there were more to look at this week. Some were handled better than others.
We knew for quite a while that there would be a death on Arrow this season, but none of the discussion I’ve seen predicted that it would be such a major death, even though major characters have been killed on this show since the beginning. It does make sense to kill Laurel as they never really knew what to do with her beyond the first season when the ex-girlfriend role made sense. They have varied so much from the comics that it is not necessary to keep her, especially as it appears, despite their current troubles, that Oliver is fated to wind up with Felicity and not Laurel.
Marc Guggenheim and Wendy Mericle, and Paul Blackthorne (Detective Lance) discussed the episode with Entertainment Weekly. Here are some of the questions:
But seriously, why Laurel?
“Obviously Arrow is always a show that’s evolving,” Guggenheim says. “It’s always a show where every character, arguably except for the Arrow, is fair game. We started off this year with the promise of a death and when we worked our way through our various different creative choices, we realized that the thing that will give us the most pop going into the end of the season and into next season unfortunately would be Laurel.”
Was she killed because some of the fanbase doesn’t like Laurel?
“When I say it gives us a lot of pop I don’t mean on the Internet or publicity, I mean creatively for the show,” Guggenheim says. “Every time we’ve killed off a character on the show, it’s really been for the effect it has on all the characters left behind. I don’t want to spoil the end of season 4 or what we have planned for season 5, which we’re already in the room working on, but the way we always describe it is the creative math. How divisive Laurel is as a character on Twitter is not a factor. Truth be told, Twitter is a very specific sub-segment. The number of people who don’t like Laurel is probably an infinitesimally small group, so it’s not, as they say, statistically relevant.”
But shouldn’t Oliver and Laurel be endgame?
“One of the things we knew people would think was, ‘Oh, well, in the season where Oliver and Felicity get engaged and Laurel dies, that’s clearly making a choice about who’s going to end up with who,” Guggenheim says. “Truth be told, we told the Laurel-Oliver romance story in season 1. We told that story. We never really thought about going back to it. The ‘shipping thing was not an element, it was not a factor to us. We recognize that that upsets a lot of fans, particularly the comic book fans.”
Yeah! Oliver and Laurel end up together in the comics! What gives?
“In the comics, Dinah Lance and Oliver Queen, depending on which version of the character you like, are in a romance together in various iterations,” Guggenheim says. “That, to some people, is considered canonical and iconic, and we respect that, but at the same time we’ve always made no bones about the fact that we are telling our own version of the Green Arrow mythos. The Green Arrow has had so many different interpretations, and Black Canary has had so many different interpretations over the years, that we never felt beholden to one particular interpretation. This is our interpretation, like it or not, and I recognize there are plenty of people up and down my Twitter feed who do not like it. I totally respect that. But it made the most creative sense for us going forward despite the fact that we love Katie, absolutely love Katie.”
So could Laurel come back to life?
“Not getting a chance to work with Katie day in and day out is tempered by the fact that we now live in a universe where there’s resurrection, parallel earths, time travel, flashbacks — we have all these different ways of keeping Katie in the Arrow-verse family,” Guggenheim says. “In fact, you will see her on an episode of Flash playing the Earth-2 version of Laurel Lance. Katie is reprising her role as Laurel of Earth-1 to be in Vixen season 2. Death does not mean goodbye on any of these shows, but we made a creative choice and we’re sticking to it. We’re recognizing that Black Canary and Laurel have an incredibly loyal fanbase, and Katie has an incredibly loyal fanbase, but the show has never been just about the comic book history, it’s never been just about one or two different particular fanbases. We make the creative choices we feel benefit the show as a whole and the story that we’re telling overall.”
But by bringing her back on other shows, doesn’t that cheapen Laurel’s death?
“We definitely recognize across all three shows that when we kill off a character, it means something different now,” Guggenheim says. “I’m not going to put a qualitative judgment on whether it’s more or less impactful. I’ll leave that to the audience, but certainly we acknowledge there’s a difference. Arrow, much more so than Flash or Legends, it traffics in death. We started off the series of the apparent death of Sara Lance and the actual death of Robert Queen and a hero who murdered people. For better or for worse, death is part of the show. What we’re finding is that death now, as it should by the way, when you start to get where we are pushing into season 5, the show has to evolve, it has to change. The concept of death on this show is evolving and changing as we’ve already seen with Sara Lance, and with seeing Laurel in a parallel universe. There’s a world where we do an episode where Oliver Queen meets the Laurel Lance of Earth-2. That’s now on the table. Time travel is now on the table. As the show has evolved, so has death.”
The interview also dealt with reactions from the other characters, and revealed that we will not find out what Laurel said to Oliver before she died until next season, showing that the death of Laurel will be impacting the show for some time. As noted in the interview, Katie Cassidy will appear as an Earth-2 version of Laurel on The Flash. Her sister will also get a chance to react to her death on Legends of Tomorrow. Additional interviews from cast and crew can be seen here.
In other Arrow news, Echo Kellum (Curtis) has been promoted to a series regular for season 5, and presumably will be an active part of Team Arrow. I also would not be surprised to see Felicity getting back with the team, whether or not it takes time for her to get back with Oliver.
The Americans had the death of a major character at a strange time. (More spoilers here). It would have made more sense to end Nina’s story at the end of last season rather than continuing it so briefly this year, but many of the plot thread from last season were left to continue this year. It also provided an interesting look at how such executions were handled, with Nina being shot only three seconds after being told her appeal was denied and her death sentence would be carried out shortly.
TVLINE | When was she originally supposed to die? JOEL FIELDS | We went back and forth a little bit. There was a point at which we thought she might go at the end of Season 3. Then we fussed around with different episodes in Season 4. So yeah, there was a little bit of elasticity to it.
TVLINE | Why, ultimately, the decision to kill off Nina now? FIELDS | It was really all about how the story laid out and how it fit in with other stories. … You do get very attached to these characters. As writers, you get very attached to them, and as actors, you fuse with them in a certain way. So it feels like a real loss.
TVLINE | So poor Nina was always doomed? FIELDS | Well, not from the very beginning. And frankly, you’ve got to define “doomed.” The truth is, this character transformed in a way that has great meaning, and she could have maybe found a way to continue on as somebody who would do anything to survive. But instead, she grew. And she grew into a character who was willing to take a risk to do the right thing for someone else. Although she paid the ultimate price for it, she grew into a much fuller person. Yes, she made her choices, and in all seriousness, we have a lot of respect for her choices.
TVLINE | The method of her death was so brutal and quick. How did you land on that? WEISBERG | That’s how they actually executed traitors. We learned about it from a book written by our consultant, Sergei Kostin. His book came out after the end of the Cold War, and we tried to follow it beat by beat in our script. Our director followed it beat by beat [and] beautifully shot it. As soon as we read it, we thought, “This is the way to do it.” It was so dramatic and so powerful and, interestingly enough, so humane. Because the reason they came up with that system was to spare the person being shot any foreknowledge about what was going to happen so they wouldn’t suffer and be afraid.
TVLINE | Nina has been separated from much of the main cast for a while now. Will her death reverberate for the rest of the characters somehow? WEISBERG | I think it’s safe to say that Oleg’s father is very highly placed in the Soviet government, so he could easily find out what happened. I don’t think we ever saw that story as separated as maybe some people did. Even though the role was not as interconnected in the way that things are interconnected today with the internet and communications, it was still an interconnected role at the heart.
TVLINE | Did Oleg’s dad try to reach out to help her? WEISBERG | He did try, but he just wasn’t successful.
Spoiler TV has an interview with Annet Mahendru who played Nina, and also appeared in The X-Files revival this year:
Could you talk a bit about Nina’s motivations for helping Anton [Baklanov], what her mindset is and how you dealt with the change in her this season?
Annet Mahendru: I think last season we see it goes on for a while, she’s figuring him out, she’s always about the other – she’s kind of a reactor to things – and she doesn’t quite know what to do with Anton and she sees a human being for the first time and it brings that out of her. And she’s exhausted, she’s been in this hamster wheel over and over buying her life out, walking this thin line and you know, every decision, every step, it’s life or death for her and she’s exhausted and she’s falling and she can’t do this anymore. And he moves something in her. For the first time it’s something very direct: he has a son, and she’s given all that up when she entered this profession and she finds joy in his world and his letters and love and for the first time I think we see her happy and she literally gives up everything for that moment of happiness and that’s her freedom from that tragic life that she has chosen and has been dealing with [since we met] her. So I think for joy and for just she lives for the first time and that’s what she needs to do to live and sometimes you need to change in order to survive and that’s what she does.
Nina seemed quite resigned when reading the statement from Baklanov. Do you think she’s at peace with her fate now?
Annet Mahendru: I think she’s content, she is, she’s very much settled and she’s ok now because she did something for the first time that allowed her to be who she is and something that she saw, you know she has done everything to secure the future of the Soviet Union, this cause, this great cause that is so far-fetched and to hear something so direct – there’s a boy that needs to know that his dad loves him and she did that and that’s the greatest thing she’s ever done.
What was your reaction like when you got the script for this episode? Did [creators] Joel [Fields] and Joe [Weisberg] give you some heads up or did you find out as you were reading?
Annet Mahendru: (Laughs) Goodness no, I got the first script and then I got a phone call and you kind of wait for that phone call from the get-go – everytime they call you, that might be the phone call. It finally came and I played it really cool because you’d think you’d be prepared for it but you absolutely are not. I was angry at them, I loved them, I felt every single thing you could possibly feel and I remember my mom was like “it’s not you dying, it’s Nina, it’s Nina” because it just felt like a part of me that I was so lucky to be able to tap into and that I had to also say goodbye to. And the weird thing is I felt like in the 2nd episode I’m getting to know Nina, she’s meeting her husband, she finally has her own mission, her transformation that she desperately needed and I felt like I had just gotten a taste of her and that’s it and then like an episode later she’s dead. So that little bit of joy, that little bit of her that I finally got, it was so fleeting and it was over before I could really embrace it and it was really sad. We’ve all been, since the beginning, treasuring her and fighting for her – it’s really been a fight – and it just made me realise that it’s just such a tragic life and that it’s real, you know, this happens out there and it made me really angry.
Could you compare working on a show like this to working on a show like The X-Files?
Annet Mahendru: You know, it was really ironic, it was like a double death for my characters this year. It was a lot of death but Sveta died for the reopening of the X-Files and Nina died for starting something very important for an individual. It was a really difficult season and also the greatest season at the same time. The X-Files was a real treat and it was another special story that I got to tell.
From a mass audience perspective the death on the season (and perhaps series) finale of Sleepy Hollow was the biggest, but as I was also giving up on the show it mattered the least to me. (More spoilers ahead). The she had already lost its way after the first season, when it centered around the relationship between Ichabod and Abbie. There is no news yet as to whether the series will be renewed. While this was also not a very satisfactory way to end the series, it would probably be best to end it now, unless someone can go back in time and end it after the first season.
TV Line discussed the episode with showrunner Clifton Campbell:
TVLINE | I’m going to jump in with the big question first: Is Abbie really dead? Is this the last we’ll see of her?
The character of Abbie Mills makes the supreme sacrifice to save the world, and her character dies in the season finale, yes. To answer the second part of that question, she will not return to the show as Abbie Mills. There’s certainly the possibility, given our really good relationship with Nicole and how much she’s help build us these past three seasons, that reflections of her will be around and that the idea of her will be around is certainly something we’ve all talked about, but not as the character of Abbie Mills.
TVLINE | So is Nicole Beharie no longer with the show?
Nicole Beharie as Abbie Mills is no longer with the show. The character is dead. But we’ve had a terrific run with her. She’s been an absolute delight. She helped build out the mythology of the show, and we’ve had a tremendous run with her. The character is gone and, like I said, in Sleepy Hollow it’s always surprising to see how the reflections of one character or another can influence the show moving forward.
TVLINE | Ichabod’s grief over what happens is palpable, but I was struck by how Tom Mison played it contained. Did you think about Ichabod having a big emotional moment after he realizes she’s gone? Did you shoot any takes like that?
Listen, Tom has really created this character from the bottom up. His instincts are without parallel. His fearless creation of this character in all of these moments, particularly as they pertain to his relationship with Abbie Mills, is not something any of us would second guess. You picked up on that contained emotion — I think this is such a big moment, and a huge loss in his life and his world that he needs to process. At a point where we have that opportunity in the finale, he hasn’t quite reached that point yet.
TVLINE | Having Abbie sacrifice herself twice in the same season — fans might think, “Well, you brought her back last time…” What’s the fundamental difference between her going into the tree and her willingly entering Pandora’s box?
Well, she knew she wasn’t coming out of the box in the finale. She knew, because of what they learned in the catacombs, that the box was missing its hope, which is at the center of darkness and gave it context, gave it form. She knew she was giving herself to the box… that that meant she would not be coming back.
At the midseason break this year, it was more immediate. The Shard of Anubis was going to blow; her sister and Crane and everybody in close proximity could suffer catastrophic loss. Abbie knows she’s giving her life up at the end of Season 3 to save the world. The difference is, from the audience’s perspective, is [at the midseason break] she had fallen into a realm that we didn’t know about. She didn’t die.
Hulu completed 11.23.63 last week with the series clearly being about whether one person, John Kennedy, would die. While I noted some negative reviews when the show first started, with some suggesting that viewers skip ahead to the final episode, I did find it enjoyable throughout the entire season. The finale did flow well from what was shown before. (More spoilers ahead).
The series began by including a cosmic reset switch when introducing its rules for time travel. Whenever anyone went back in time, everything they did in a previous visit was reset and they could start all over again. Knowing about this reset switch from the start, the most obvious outcome was that Jake would be successful in preventing the assassination of John F. Kennedy, but things would be worse because of him doing so and he would have to go back in time to reset this.
The show was not very clear as to why things were so awful when Jake returned to the present, leading me to quickly skim the ending of the book. In the book the issue comes down to matters of destruction because of making changes in time itself, as opposed to a result of Kennedy’s actions after remaining alive.
It was clear several episodes before the end that the real story was about what would happen between Jake and Sadie, a woman Jake fell in love with after going back in time. When he spoke about bringing her back to the present with him, my first thought was that we have seen people go back in time, but never forward in time from their timeline. Whether or not it was possible for Sadie to go forward in time, Jake had to sacrifice the relationship in order for her to live to have a happy life. Over the course of the finale, John Kennedy and Sadie were both killed and not killed on different trips back in time.
Orphan Black returns on April 14 on BBC America. The first four minutes are above. Here is the synopsis, which does not even mention the events of the flashback with Beth Childs.
After two months of respite, Sarah’s hard-won refuge in Iceland is shattered by a Neolution attack. Once again forced to flee, she realizes no matter how far her family runs it will never be far enough.
For those interested in still more television deaths, Geeks of Doom reviews the season finale of The Walking Dead.
Filming has begun on Season 4 of Sherlock, with Steven Moffat being vague in his comments on where the season goes.
Last week I noted how economic considerations, including pressure from Disney and other studios, led to a veto of a “religious liberties” law in Georgia. North Carolina has passed a similar discriminatory law, and now they have seen the first economic consequences of this:
Bruce Springsteen canceled Sunday’s concert at the Greensboro Coliseum because of House Bill 2, saying in a statement that he and his band would show solidarity for North Carolinians working to oppose the law.
“Some things are more important than a rock show and this fight against prejudice and bigotry — which is happening as I write — is one of them,” the singer wrote on his website. “It is the strongest means I have for raising my voice in opposition to those who continue to push us backwards instead of forwards.”
…HB 2, passed quickly by the General Assembly in a one-day special session last month, prevents cities and counties from passing anti-discrimination ordinances to protect lesbian, gay and transgender residents. Legislators passed the bill in response to an ordinance adopted in Charlotte that would have allowed transgender people to use the bathroom of the gender they identify with, a provision overturned by the new law.
Dozens of businesses, including American Airlines, Dow Chemical, BioGen and Labcorp, have spoken out against the law. PayPal canceled a planned $3.6 million expansion in Charlotte that would have created 400 jobs, and dozens of people have canceled attendance at the semiannual furniture market in High Point that starts next weekend.
Cancellation of the Springsteen concert is the first major economic blow to Greensboro as a result of the law.
John Kasich said that he would not have signed the law:
“I believe that religious institutions ought to be protected and be able to be in a position of where they can live out their deeply held religious purposes,” Kasich, who’s running for the Republican presidential nomination, told host John Dickerson in an interview for Sunday’s “Face the Nation.” “But when you get beyond that it gets to be a tricky issue. And tricky is not the right word, but it can become a contentious issue.”
We might have to wait until 2017 for another season of Doctor Who under a new show runner, but there is plenty of other time travel science fiction on television. A new time travel show, 11/22/63, begins on Hulu in about two weeks. One new time travel show, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow just recently started, and other genre shows also deal with time travel.
After seeing the completion of the second part of the season premiere of Legends of Tomorrow, I plan to stick with it but have concerns. The show had three elements. There were the superheros fighting regular people, but this was no contest. There was the fight against Vandal Savage, but he is both immortal and we know he nothing can happen to him until the end of the series as it is all about stopping him. Then there were the time travel elements, including whether Martin Stein will meet the woman who is to become his wife, or if their travel to 1975 messed this up. Unfortunately it was far too simplistic for anyone who has seen time travel stories. At least the interactions between the cast members kept the show interesting, leaving hope for the series if they can improve upon the writing now that the setup has been established.
Plus the show could benefit by bringing in other members of the DC Universe, including some from other Berlanti television shows. Stephen Amell will appear as the Arrow on a future episode, except it will take place in 2046:
“Every once and a while, we do an episode where the 10-year-old me has to pinch himself,” executive producer Marc Guggenheim says. “We’re not only introducing our version of Connor Hawke to our universe, we’re going to meet the 2046 version of Oliver Queen, and Stephen Amell is going to be reprising his role from Arrow. As an added bonus to comic-book fans, Oliver is missing his left arm and will be sporting a goatee, in a nod to the character’s appearance in the seminal Dark Knight Returns. We think this episode features some of the coolest things we’ve ever done.”
…Amell isn’t the only familiar face from the Berlanti-verse set to appear on Legends. Among the others: Arrow’s Damien Darhk (Neal McDonough) and Ra’s al Ghul (Matthew Nable), and The Flash’s Cisco Ramon (Carlos Valdes), while there’s a very strong chance we’ll see a younger and/or older version of Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) as well.
The Flash is getting into some really timey wimey stuff, including having the Reverse Flash reappear after we saw him eliminated last season. The catch is that we are seeing a version of him earlier in his time line. Andrew Kreisberg discussed the show with Entertainment Weekly. Here is part of the interview.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How different is the dynamic between Barry and this Reverse-Flash (Matt Letscher) since he’s from an earlier timeline?
ANDREW KREISBERG: What’s interesting about it is this Thawne hasn’t experienced last season yet, and Barry has. On Barry’s side, there’s a lot stronger feelings — a lot more anger, a lot more betrayal, and in some cases, that’s blinding Barry to what he needs to do. It’s really an episode about Barry coming to terms with what he wants to do and what he should do regarding this version of Thawne. There are some great surprises and some character interactions between this Thawne and all of our characters. Again, they all have the benefit of having enjoyed last season and he hasn’t.
Without making my head hurt, are you going to explain how the Reverse-Flash is back given Eddie’s (Rick Cosnett) death?
Yup. [Laughs]
When Barry ran through the time stream last year, he saw himself in jail. Will that be addressed this season?
Not this season. There’s a very famous comic book, “The Trial of The Flash,” where Barry was arrested for murder. We wanted all of those little future things to have a little nod to the comics, which is why we saw The Flash museum and why we did that little bit. It wasn’t something that was consciously have planned, per se, but it was a fun way to honor the comic book. While it always goes through our filter, we do tend to take a lot of stories and ideas from the comics, and that was a way to honor the comics.
How is Barry handling losing Patty (Shantel VanSanten), and could this open up his eyes back up to Iris (Candice Patton) again?
That could definitely happen. Right now, he’s reeling a little bit. Zoom is the splinter in his foot; it’s the thing that’s out there and ruining everything for him. What’s really going to happen after Patty’s last episode, which is this week, is it’s really this need to get Zoom. Barry is still haunted by that video message that Wells [Tom Cavanagh] left, which said he’s never going to be happy. Now that he’s lost Patty, he’s decided that stopping Zoom is the only way he’s ever really going to be happy and disprove Wells/Thawne’s hypothesis.
What can you tease about the identity of Zoom and when we might learn more about him?
We’ve never played this card down on a villain before, which is neat and interesting to us. As the season progresses, more will be revealed. We obviously don’t want to give too much away, because we’ve made his identity a mystery that’s part of the ongoing storyline. We’re really jazzed about the storytelling choices that we’ve made this season. So far, the audience has gone with them, and we hope they’ll continue to do so.
Shawn Ryan and Eric Kripke are making Time for NBC. Literally.
The Peacock network has ordered a sci-fi drama pilot from the respective creators of The Shield and Supernatural titled Time that follows an unlikely trio who travel through (wait for it… ) time to battle a brilliant criminal intent on altering the fabric of human history with potentially catastrophic results.
The 100 returned for its third season. So far I haven’t liked it as much as the previous two seasons, but there has been a lot of setup and I’m hoping for improvement as we get into the new story lines. The final scene of last week’s episode when Clarke met an old friend or enemy was certainly interesting. Entertainment Weekly asked creator Jason Rothenberg and actors Marie Avgeropoulos, Bob Morley, Christopher Larkin, Eliza Taylor, Devon Bostick, and Richard Harmon about the season. Here is some of what they said:
…about the time-jump
“There’s relative peace when we start, so the people are able to take a breath, explore, and map the region. They’re building a real, functioning civilization, which they haven’t had a chance to do since they landed because they’ve been getting killed every second of every day. Now they can do that. And then the s— hits the fan.” —Rothenberg
…about Ice Nation
“[They] are a bit of an unknown. They’re quite renowned for being very fierce and aggressive. [Skaikru] are really not expecting that kind of welcome that they give them.” —Morley
…about the Big Bad
“This season you have to decide who the bad guy is and what side you want to be on, because one of the things Jason [Rothenberg] is doing a great job of is putting the leads all over the map and on all different sides — fighting each other and not even knowing they’re fighting each other.” —Harmon
…about Clarke
“I think fans will be very surprised with how Clarke has changed and been hardened by and broken by what she’s had to do.” —Rothenberg
“I think everyone is just going on with their lives [without her]. There’s not a lot you can do about somebody who wants to just leave and be on their own. You can sit there and wallow in it or you can just carry on. There are bigger fish to fry really… like this thing called living.” [Laughs] —Morley
Netflix has announced that the revival of Gilmore Girls is now officially going ahead. (As set pictures have already been released, I’m not certain how this announcement really changes anything.) With Gilmore Girls coming back,Lauren Valenti of Marie Claire decided to try eating like Lorelei and Rory. That means a lot of pizza, junk food, and coffee:
A week into 2016, I had a Gilmore Girls-induced epiphany. Lorelai and Rory were scarfing down pepperoni pizza on the couch and making fun of Dean for ordering a salad because, dude, seriously? Heroes, I thought for the millionth time.
And then it occurred to me. Their complete and utter lack of hang-up about calories was the most refreshing thing I’d seen in a while—especially in the midst of all this talk about New Year’s resolutions and diets and “getting in shape.” Women inhaling junk food, take-out Chinese, and copious amounts of coffee—what a profound F U to those judgy, clean-eating freaks.
The result was that she lost two pounds.
As a physician, I cannot recommend that you try this diet at home.
The season finale of The Americans felt more like a mid-season break, consistent with the earlier statements from the producers that they were carrying the plot threads from the third season into the fourth. This makes good sense as shows such as Homeland have shown how easy it might be to use up the story lines which really propel a show and then have to search for a reason to continue.
There were at least two major plot lines addressed in this episode, with one providing a major cliff hanger. Taking Paige to meet her Russian grandmother only served to make her more upset about her identity, leading to the final scene when she called Pastor Tim and told him that her parents are Russian spies.
There are many conceivable ways that this can go. Will Pastor Tim, assuming he believes the story, feel obligated to preserve her secret? Assuming that Elizabeth and Philip find out, will they make sure that Pastor Tim does not survive to tell anyone? There is also speculation among some fans that Pastor Tim is also a spy, but that might be a too convenient way to resolve the issue.
While this is the major cliff hanger of the season, the Martha story line also remains more fascinating after last week’s revelation. This week we learned that Martha is still alive, and that Philip covered for her by framing an FBI tech person for planting the bug. We still don’t know what cover story he is now telling Martha. Does Martha now know he is a Russian spy, or maybe she thinks he is working for a more secret US organization. Martha clearly knows that the person was framed, and should be able to figure out that his suicide was actually a murder. There is a lot for Martha to consider here. This all has Philip questioning his life as he searches for answers at the EST meetings, while Elizabeth has no doubts, especially while listening to Ronald Reagan call her home the evil empire.
Producers Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields discussed the cliff hanger with The Hollywood Reporter:
Why did you decide to leave it on a cliffhanger?
Fields We’re glad to hear you say it’s a cliffhanger. We talked about that in the room actually, whether or not it should be called a cliffhanger. I suppose it’s a cliffhanger in the show in the sense that one really wants to find out what’s going to happen next, and that’s a good thing. But, to us, it’s all about the characters. What’s most interesting to us is what’s going to happen to these people next, and what personal dramas will they go through next. That’s always more interesting to us than someone kicking in the door with a gun in their hand.
Weisberg We’re also used to drama where a cliffhanger means that somebody is or isn’t going to die or something like that. So the idea that the real question is: Is this guy who got a phone call going to make another phone call? We were really debating if that would count as a cliffhanger.
Fields More like a telephone-hanger. (Laughs.)
And why did you choose for the cliffhanger to be Paige telling Pastor Tim the truth about her parents?
Fields We knew Paige was going to tell Pastor Tim for quite some time, but we just didn’t know exactly where it would fall in the drama — just like we knew that Philip and Elizabeth were going to tell Paige, but we didn’t know exactly where that would fall into the drama. This family is truly a family, and as such loves each other in its own way. Yet, at the same time, their family has blind spots. The idea that these parents had thought that they had gotten through a rough patch with their daughter and thought that things were on an even keel while missing entirely what was going on, it just rings very true. Somebody just said in our writers’ room today, “What’s really going on is that Philip and Elizabeth have an adolescent.”
For all we knew, Paige could have turned into her own KGB agent this episode. When did you know the story wasn’t going in that direction?
Fields Toward the last third of the season.
Weisberg We considered the possibility of her making that phone call the night that they told her, and then we decided that we definitely didn’t want to do that. So then it became a question of whether or not she would tell them this season or next season, and the finale seemed like the perfect point. What’s most moving in a way is how much pain she’s in there after she comes back from her trip with her mother, and how she expresses that pain and what it drives her to do. For us, it was really moving just to see her crying there in bed when her parents are in the next room not really able to connect with her or fully comprehend how much she’s suffering. Then we have her call Pastor Tim and so openly and clearly express the pain she’s in, which is something her parents are not able to do.
TV Line has information from Marc Guggenheim on what happens the rest of this season on Arrow now that Oliver has remained with the League of Assassins following his deal to save Thea:
With Oliver choosing to stay behind in Nanda Parbat, “the character journey of [Episode] 321 is how the hell Team Arrow moves forward without Oliver,” Guggenheim previews. Whereas last time the group thought he was dead, “knowing that he’s out there and alive, but a member of the League of Assassins, that’s a whole lot harder” for Team Arrow to handle, the EP adds.
“There is a real trinity formed between Laurel, Diggle and Felicity,” Guggenheim says. “They’re all leaning on each other. They’re processing things in different ways. Laurel is throwing herself into her work saving the city. Felicity is struggling with heartbreak and grief. She really goes through the seven stages of grief with Oliver. And Diggle, something happens in [Episode] 21 that really upends Diggle’s world, certainly vis-à-vis Oliver. That’s something that will have repercussions for the remainder of the season.”
The EP adds that next week’s hour is “one of our most emotional episodes” because it’s a baddie-of-the-week installment in which “the villain of the week is Oliver.”
So with the hero giving in to the darker nature of the League, what does his future hold?
“The last three episodes spend a lot of time addressing the question of: ‘Is there hope for Oliver?’” the EP says. “And: ‘Is there hope for Oliver in Felicity’s mind?’ [Episodes] 21 and 22 have some very specific things to say about that and Felicity’s coming to grips with the conclusion of Episode 20.”
The second episode of Orphan Black this season included the return of Sarah pretending to be Beth Childs, and for a second episode Tatiana Maslany also provided the voice of another character, the scorpion. Something is clearly wrong with the Castor clones, and finding the original clone lines might provide the clue, or at least propel more episodes this season.
Logic tests might be useful to evaluate the neurological status of some clones, but Helena sure messed that up in dwelling on finding the mangoes and discussing the issue with the scorpion. Plus we know more about Cal, we saw Allison and Donnie as drug dealers, and it is time for Kira to leave for a while to get away from too many stories about having to save her.
Buddy TV discussed the episode with the show’s creators Graeme Manson and John Fawcett:
What went into the decision to have Seth’s death happen the way it did and to start the episode off with that crazy threesome?
Manson: “First on the crazy threesome. The crazy threesome was just something that we – you know…I guess what it was was when we looked at those characters, it seemed like they would potentially, because they grew up together, that they share, because they’re brothers. They share and I think that they’re of a very different kind of upbringing than our girls, and so that because they’re brothers and they share…I don’t know, it just seemed like there was a natural kind of sharing, that sexual exploits would be part of that.
But the further answer to that question is that we just thought it was kind of something that we hadn’t seen before, but it would be kind of a really terrifying way to begin the episode, to discover actually there’s a second person in the room with you. From this woman’s point of view, it’s very scary to realize that the other person in the room is a twin.”
Fawcett: “It’s also a transgression and a crime that we do not take lightly throughout the season.”
Manson: “And then in regards to the termination of Seth at the end, what’s different about this is that that is very much a mercy killing, and it is meant to be a very emotional moment. The fact that these boys have this potential terminal illness is a really horrifying kind of thing that they all have to come to grips with, and I think it’s an emotional moment between Rudy and Seth there that we wanted to explore.”
Is the glitching from the Castor clones equivalent to the illness we see with the Leda clones?
Manson: “It’s part of our scientific mystery, and discovering what ails them, it sort of parallels our Ledas searching for what their own disease is, so that is indeed part of the story, part of the mystery we’re unfolding and part of our scientific mystery.”
Is that what Project Castor is testing for, with the questions Paul asks Seth and Rudy and Helena’s being asked?
Manson: “Again, as part of the mystery of what is biologically with the Castor clones, that’s just kind of the tip of the iceberg to some degree. The thing that we do know after watching episode 2 is we do know that the Castor clones, whatever’s wrong with them, whatever’s potentially causing this, is neurological, and so I think that that’s where these tests come from, and it’s our little tip-of-the-hat homage to Blade Runner.”
Digital Spy has eleven spoilers from Bryan Fuller on the third season of Hannibal.
Netflix has renewed Daredevil for a second season.
Orphan Black returned on Saturday, beginning with a fun scene for the fans. It was another scene with Tatiana Maslany playing multiple seestas at once in Helena’s dream of perfect baby shower, reminiscent of the clone dance party scene last season. The theme for the season is girl clones vs. boy clones, which sort of sounds like a season of Survivor. So far I have far less interest in the male clones. They didn’t get the chance to be introduced gradually as the girl clones were and, as most were raised in the military, there also probably is not as much difference these clones. One does have a mustache and one does have a scar to help tell them apart.
The conspiracy aspect continues to grow as once we learn about one group another turns out to be above them. Now we are dealing with Topside, who sent a “cleaner” named Ferdinand, who was secretly plotting with Rachel in a plan called Helsinki to kill all the female Project Leda clones. After finding out about this I didn’t feel sorry at all for Rachel, who wasn’t recovering very well after Sarah poked a pencil through her eye and into her brain. She was also at the Mercy of Delphine, who is the new Rachel at Dyad, and can also be rather evil when necessary. Ferdinand’s arrival set up scenes where Sarah pretended to be Rachel, requiring Alison to pretend to be Sarah.
The Devil’s Mark had major revelations on Outlander. Geillis revealed that she is a time traveler and this was the third show recently (besides The Americans and Game of Thrones) where someone apparently died by burning to death, although her death was not actually shown. I fear that this is an exception to the television rule that if you don’t see the body the character most likely didn’t really die, but maybe we will see her again. Hopefully Geillis’s confession won’t come back to harm Claire, and any other time travelers who might show up from the 20th century, after she claimed that her smallpox vaccine is the Devil’s mark.
Claire was saved by a combination of Jaime showing up and Gellis claiming to be true witch, followed by her telling Jaime. Surprisingly Jaime accepted it all, and even took her to the stones to make the decision as to which husband to be with. It appears she chose Jaime, although I imagine it is possible she tried to return home and failed. The possibility didn’t seem to come up that if she did travel in time again by touching the stones, there was no guarantee she would return to her original time. (It would have really been awesome if she turned up in the splinter facility on 12 Monkeys.)
On Arrow we learned that Roy’s sacrifice to save Oliver was part of a plan which left everyone alive and out of prison, but left with Roy needing to leave town to keep anyone else from realizing he is still alive. While this leaves Oliver free, I still wonder how they are going to get the Arrow back openly in action. The moment the Arrow is spotted Detective Lance has new justification for following up on his knowledge that Oliver is really the Arrow.
Deadline spoke with co-creators/executive producers Greg Berlanti and Marc Guggenheim on Colton Haynes leaving the show as a regular (but will already be returning for an episode later this season).
DEADLINE: When did you know that Colton Haynes was leaving after Season 3? BERLANTI: When we made the deal. We made a two-season deal that had a clock on it, we always knew that. When he was coming off Teen Wolf, we described the role to him, and we agreed to do it for a couple of years. At that particular moment, he had a lot of opportunities to do things, and we’re lucky he chose us. He brought a lot of notoriety and viewership to Arrow when we were growing, and the show wouldn’t be the show it is without him. He is such a talent and such a nice guy, everybody from the crew to the writers were so enthusiastic to have him for the time we had him. We are sad to see him go but excited to see what he does next.
DEADLINE: How and when did Roy’s Season 3 storyline came about? BERLANTI: We knew based on what had happened last season. Roy has struggled with guilt after killing a policeman. In saving Oliver, he sees a chance to absolve himself. Hopefully it was surprising for the audience as some thought for a moment that he might die. GUGGENHEIM: We were able to deign his arc for the season with the end point in mind. We always knew he would take a heroic stance and redeem himself for his actions. It’s always a blessing when you know where exactly you are going to end up.
DEADLINE: Did you consider killing off Roy? BERLANTI: We wanted to do something different. These characters are so young, they represent the next generation of superheroes, and we love the idea of having them just out there. And as a person we like Colton so much, we all would love to see him back. Such a talented, great guy. GUGGENHEIM: The hope is that he’ll continue to be part of the universe we are building. We love working with his so much. We’ve talked to him about returning to one of the three shows, and if available, he has expressed interest. He is gone but definitely not forever.
DEADLINE: What will the impact of Roy’s departure be on Team Arrow? BERLANTI: It’s always affecting the show when one character is moving on to the great beyond. That allows the show to grow and change, with the state of loss providing high stakes. The end of this season is very much a punctuation mark on the first three seasons. Third season will feel like the end of a trilogy, with elements and pieces coming together. We are heading into a big, epic, climactic battle, and I’m not not going to give away who is going to make it. Everything will be changed after this season. GUGGENHEIM: The third season finale is among our best episodes, with each twist more shocking and surprising than the next.
Geek Olivia Munn finally gets to become a super hero character. She will play Psylocke in X-Men: Apocalypse
Jada Pinkett Smith’s charter, Fish Mooney, was a good addition to the Batman back story on Gotham, but they don’t seem to know what to do with her since Oswald Cobblepot got control of her nightclub. I am glad that they seem to have ended her recent storyline on the island, which seems pointless as it was totally unconnected to anything else going on. It doesn’t help matters that she escaped so easily (once setting up a distraction) thanks to a helicopter being unguarded and ready to go. Jada Pinkett Smith has said she will be leaving the show after her contract runs out this season but the producers have hinted that they might find reason to keep her around. It better be a better story line if they do.
HBO has renewed Veep and Silicon Valley just after their current seasons began and Netflix has renewed Orange Is The New Black for a fourth season before the third season has become available. Selina Meyer in now President on Veep and Hugh Laurie will be guest staring later this season. The Hollywood Reporter has interviewed Veep series creator Armando Iannucci about the current season.
There were complaints previously that blind people could not appreciate Daredevil, a show with a blind hero, because Netflix did not use audio description as some networks do. Netflix has remedied the problem to make the show more accessible to the visually impaired.
The penultimate episode of The Americans, I Am Abassin Zadran, may have concluded one story line but leaves many story lines open. The producers have said they plan to carry some over to next season. The situation with Paige is pretty obviously ongoing. It is hard to believe they will wrap up Nina’s storyline in Russia. There has been very little of Kimmy recently and, while this conceivably could be wrapped up in the final episode, I suspect they are intentionally moving slowly on this to wait until next season.
Of course the big cliff hanger of the episode occurred when Phillip slowly removed his wig and revealed how he really looks to Martha, who was sitting on the bed with a suitcase, on the verge of leaving town. At least two quite different interpretations for this come to mind. Maybe he is revealing himself to her prior to giving her the Annelise treatment and packing her up in her own suitcase. Maybe he is thinking of how he came clean with Paige, and is also planning to tell Martha a variation of the truth in a last attempt to get her to trust him. This could be either to continue spying for him, or to get her to safety before the FBI figures out that she was the one to plant the bug. If that is his plan, he is taking a bigger risk. Previously if she was arrested she might have given the FBI a description of Phillip in disguise. Now there is the risk she will give a description of how he really looks, and just maybe Stan will recognize him.
It was also good to see Margo Martindale return in her scene in the diner with Gabriel as they discussed background information going back to last season when Jared killed his parents, along with how Americans have too many choices for their tastes. I was surprised to see that Gabriel was so sympathetic to Phillip’s desire to protect Paige.
David Chase gave a fascinating description of what he planned scene by scene in the finale of The Soprano’s. Here are the descriptions of the final scene, but check out the full article for his description of the scenes leading up to this:
This is the last shot of the family, or the three of them anyway. Framing is extremely important. I think it makes you feel so much below the level of verbiage and words. What they’re talking about is how good those onion rings are. For me, food is always central to a feeling of family and to a feeling of security and happiness. A.J. had remembered a moment at the end of the final show of the first season when they were all sitting down, eating in Vesuvio’s Italian restaurant and Tony said, ‘Just remember … value the good times,’ the moments, there really aren’t that many of them. And this is one of the very good times. And yet there’s something wrong with it because Meadow is not there. So the family isn’t really together. I think on some subliminal level that raises the tension. We know the family should be together and they’re not.
I said to Gandolfini, the bell rings and you look up. That last shot of Tony ends on ‘don’t stop,’ it’s mid-song. I’m not going to go into [if that’s Tony’s POV]. I thought the possibility would go through a lot of people’s minds or maybe everybody’s mind that he was killed. He might have gotten shot three years ago in that situation. But he didn’t. Whether this is the end here, or not, it’s going to come at some point for the rest of us. Hopefully we’re not going to get shot by some rival gang mob or anything like that. I’m not saying that [happened]. But obviously he stood more of a chance of getting shot by a rival gang mob than you or I do because he put himself in that situation. All I know is the end is coming for all of us.
I thought the ending would be somewhat jarring, sure. But not to the extent it was, and not a subject of such discussion. I really had no idea about that. I never considered the black a shot. I just thought what we see is black. The ceiling I was going for at that point, the biggest feeling I was going for, honestly, was don’t stop believing. It was very simple and much more on the nose than people think. That’s what I wanted people to believe. That life ends and death comes, but don’t stop believing. There are attachments we make in life, even though it’s all going to come to an end, that are worth so much, and we’re so lucky to have been able to experience them. Life is short. Either it ends here for Tony or some other time. But in spite of that, it’s really worth it. So don’t stop believing.
So apparently when Chase has said in some interviews that the final scene had a definite meaning, the meaning was more along the lines of “don’t stop believing” than whether Tony was killed here or at some other time.
Jon Stewart spoke with The Guardian about why he is leaving The Daily Show:
“Honestly, it was a combination of the limitations of my brain and a format that is geared towards following an increasingly redundant process, which is our political process. I was just thinking, ‘Are there other ways to skin this cat?’ And, beyond that, it would be nice to be home when my little elves get home from school, occasionally.”
He has a 10-year-old son, Nathan, and a nine-year-old daughter, Maggie; Stewart and his wife, Tracey, have been married for almost as long as he’s been doing the show, after Stewart proposed to her via a crossword puzzle.
If anything, it was the prospect of the upcoming US election that pushed him to leave the show. “I’d covered an election four times, and it didn’t appear that there was going to be anything wildly different about this one,” he says.
“Anyone could, because that story is absolutely everything that it’s supposed to be about,” he says, with a groan; as a revelation, it managed to be at once depressing and completely unsurprising. “I also felt that, for the show, you don’t want to leave when the cupboard’s bare. So I think it’s a better introduction when you have something providing you with assisted fuel, like a presidential campaign. But really, the value of this show is so much deeper than my contribution,” he says.
This means he will no longer have to watch Fox, but he did answer a hypothetical question as to a situation in which he might watch again:
Now that he is leaving The Daily Show, is there any circumstance in which he would watch Fox News again? He takes a few seconds to ponder the question. “Umm… All right, let’s say that it’s a nuclear winter, and I have been wandering, and there appears to be a flickering light through what appears to be a radioactive cloud and I think that light might be a food source that could help my family. I might glance at it for a moment until I realise, that’s Fox News, and then I shut it off. That’s the circumstance.”