Alcatraz showrunners Jennifer Johnson and Daniel Pyne open up on the mythology and world building of the mystery drama’s first season, and their plans for Season 2.
The following interview may contains some mild spoilers
With seven episodes having aired, we’re pretty much at the stage where original showrunner Elizabeth Sarnoff exited the show over creative differences, so, from this point onwards the show will resemble Johnson and Pyne’s vision more fully. They describe what the remainder of the season holds:
PYNE: We’re trying to arc out the first 13, so that by the end of them, people will have answers to many questions rather than just continuing to wind out the same questions, over and over. By the end of 13, we hope that people will see what’s behind the secret door, they’ll understand what is being put into the blood and maybe the reason why, and a little bit more of the architecture of what’s happening present-day with these guys who are coming back. Clearly in the past, they were in prison and that was their life. But, now that they’re coming back, there’s a sense that there’s a master plan afoot, and we’re going to try to answer some of that question.
JOHNSON: Rebecca (Sarah Jones) will finally face off with Tommy Madsen (David Hoflin), her grandfather who killed her partner.
Given the interconnected nature of the show, the pair explain that they’ve started laying the foundation for a potential second season, while also being mindful to focus primarily on this first chapter:
PYNE: If you think too far ahead, you run the risk of losing the audience and losing your fans. You want to give people satisfying stories, so that if they miss next week, they’re not going to feel completely lost the week after. At the same time, you want to be able to lay the groundwork for really good stuff later. You want to have enough pieces, so that you can go to a lot of different places and so that the narrative doesn’t start to narrow down and go in just one direction.
JOHNSON: This season would be a chapter in a novel. On a macro level, we think, “Who will the main players of the next chapter be? What will the shift be? What will the new paradigm be? How much will we know, coming in? What will be the new mystery that we want to tell?” A lot of the mysteries we’ve set up now will be answered, and then we’ll get on to the next level of that mystery.
PYNE: This season is really about Tommy Madsen, and about Rebecca pursuing this distant, weird connection that she has with this guy who killed her partner, and solving the riddle of why he was there and what happened. That will close out, and then a new mystery will emerge. Next season will be about something else.
Pyne and Johnson offer some clues as to what Season 2 might entail:
PYNE: Next season could be exploring Warden James (Jonny Coyne) and what he did at the prison, and whether he jumped and is here now, or any number of other things. It could loop back to Jack Sylvane (Jeffrey Pierce).
JOHNSON: Once we open the door, at the end of this season, that mystery will be answered, but it will give us a jumping-off point for a whole new level of mysteries. We think of, “How can the whole season stand on its own?,” and it is. In the pilot, we introduced Tommy Madsen and the relationship that Rebecca had to him, and we wanted to have them see each other and come face-to-face, for the first time. That was really important to us, to do by the finale. We’ll have answered the questions that we’ve posed, at the beginning of the season, by the end of the season. And then, once we open the door, we’ll platform new mysteries.
The pair also offer the following tidbits:
- Lucy and Beauregard were among the key players on the Island at the time of the incident (editor’s note: does this rule out Lucy time-travelling back to the past at some point? I don’t think so)
- They hint that this season’s returning inmates all woke up within the last week or so, whereas future seasons may introduce inmates who are more integrated into society, perhaps based on when they woke up. This may give our team new challenges in finding them while expanding the mythology.
Interesting to note Pyne’s comment about what’s being put into the blood (did he mean to be so specific?). Not a great surprise since we know the blood is being extracted for some purpose, but it adds context that might hold implications for Rebecca’s origins (as well as solidify a few theories regarding the jumps).
Source: Collider
Alcatraz airs Mon. 9/8c on FOX
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Season 2? Perhaps they’re not seeing the same ratings plunge that I’m seeing? I think Alcatraz is toast.
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I hope they loop back to Jack Sylvane. He could be very interesting if given more of a story.
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