The second season of 12 Monkeys premieres tonight (April 18) on Syfy and is called “Year of the Monkey,” and a few weeks ago, cast and producers of the show talked with the press abut Season 2 at a NBCUniversal Summer press event.
Executive Producer Terry Matalas was one of the talents in attendance, and he teased that Season 2 of 12 Monkeys will be “pretty epic in scope.”
“It’s just a huge adventure that spans centuries,” he says of what we can look forward to in the Syfy series’ sophomore year. “When you’re kind of mapping that out, you have to make sure you’re not running into yourself; or if you are running into yourself and you are going to have a paradox, then that becomes the story. It’s a complicated writing process. It takes a lot. But we have a lot of fun doing it,” he says. Along the way, the characters will learn more about the nature of time travel and time itself.
“These different time periods are a really great place to explore these characters emotionally, I think,” Matalas continues. “This show is very much a complicated love story between not only our two main characters, but through a few of them, and to be able to do that in the 1950s and the 1940s and the 1970s is a very romantic place to be.” Relationships — both of the romance and bromance varieties — will continue to make up the core of the show, and if you haven’t seen 12 Monkeys yet, Matalas says that you can actually “just jump into Season 2.”
“We catch you up pretty quick in the first episode, and the journey that they go on is much richer this season. So it’s very easy to get on board,” he promises.
Finally, in a TV world that has seen some beloved female characters departing shows in recent weeks, Matalas attests that the driving force of the show “really is the women.”
“The time travel project is about a woman who is trying to undo the death of her daughter, Barbara Sukowa’s character. And then the other scientist, who is trying to save the world, is Cassie,” he explains.
12 Monkeys will return tonight (April 18) at 9PM on Syfy. You can see some photos from the season premiere below.
