The creator of ‘Penny Dreadful’, John Logan, as well as stars Josh Hartnett, Reeve Carney, and Harry Treadaway were at the SDCC 2014 to participate in a panel for the show, and they’ve given us a lot of information on the characters as well as a little of what to expect in the second season. If you haven’t caught up fully, there are some spoilers within and I’m going to jump head first into one of them.
We’re going to start off with talking about Ethan ending up being a werewolf. While I’m sure most of us suspected that from the scene in the park, Logan clarified it a bit more:
“What this show is about is the monster in all of us. Then I thought about Ethan Chandler (Hartnett)… I thought of hiking in America …and coyotes and wolves.”
While he wouldn’t say if werewolves were born or bitten, he did say that much like Vanessa’s past, “next season we will do something similar. I hope to continue doing that for all the characters.” Also, while Ethan apparently doesn’t know everything going on, he will find out what happens when he has his blackouts where he shifts into a wolf and has to deal with it.
Speaking of the villain for the next season, we’re going to be seeing more of Madame Kali as was hinted in the last episode. She is going to be the central antagonist and “her supernatural world will become the big threat.” This was brought up before a clip was shown where we see Kali talking about Ives with Simon Russell Beale’s Ferdinand Lyle, “Miss Ives, Miss Ives, speaking to demons and touching lives. What games we’ll have, Miss Ives and I, where one will live and one will die. My dear friend, we’ve just begun. Soon we shall unleash glorious horrors.”
Clearly she isn’t the beneficial spiritualist she was trying to play initially and will take a drastically darker turn on screen when she returns. In fact because of her specifically Logan states, “the cosmology, the theology of the show gets much larger [in season two] — they’re thrown into a much more threatening supernatural world.”
Speaking of the eccentric Egyptologist Lyle above, “He becomes deeply important,” he said. “His accent is actually — and this is a spoiler– a version of the great playwright Thomas Stoppard.”
Kali won’t be the only villain as The Master is still live and kicking at the end of the last season and they will give us more details of their version of the Dracula story which I can’t wait to find out more on. I’m sure it’ll help that we will be introduced to a new character that will, according to Logan, “will lead us further into the Dracula origin story.”
When it comes to Dorian Gray, it sounds like we’ll actually get to see what his portrait looks like this coming season. When speaking of his character, Carney stated:
“There’s an inherent sadness that comes with losing everyone you’ve ever lost. The portrait bears the burden of his sins, but it certainly crosses his mind.”
Bringing up Dorian and Ethan’s one night stand and asked if there’d be another. Logan responded that “As a gay man, I thought it would be corrupt and inorganic to not deal with all forms of sexuality… all iterations of what it means to be human. I believe humans behave in the moment in the way that is true to them.”
Speaking of sexuality, though, it is hard to miss out on Vanessa’s as it is strongly bubbling to the surface and at any moment could boil over and unleash a demon on the world. Logan, however, doesn’t want sexuality to always be a bad thing on screen:
“It doesn’t work out for any of these people when they have sex,” he said. “In no way is sexuality a bad thing, nor is unlocking a demon a bad thing.”
It will be interesting to watch as Ethan and Vanessa grow closer this season before we see the resurrected Brona show up which is bound to happen.
For more of what was talked about, you can watch the full panel below.
Are you looking forward to what the second season of ‘Penny Dreadful’ is set to bring? Share your thoughts below!
(Video courtesy of magic by the numbers)
