While the first season of NBC’s Revolution was successful enough to be renewed for a second year, which will air Wednesdays at 8PM starting September 25, even the show’s creator will admit that some changes were needed for Season 2.
We spoke with that creator, Eric Kripke, at this year’s Comic-Con International in San Diego, where he was very candid about some things that weren’t happening for the show, and what the show intends to do to improve for the second year.
“If last season was about war, this season is more about mystery,” Kripke reveals. “I still give answers. I still unfold things at a nice healthy clip, but I really wanted to push through… Last season was just about ‘do we stop Monroe and do we flip on a switch?’ And it’s hard to sustain series television… you could really make a great movie out of that, but what I found was, it was challenging. I’m harder on Season 1 than anyone. My headline is, like, I’m out to prove something for Season 2. I’m aggressively working on building a better engine here. The problem with Season 1 was it was too simple, so we either ended up treading water, or we ended up throwing drones at the problem, and just spectacle. And the second half of Season 1, I’m watching and I’m like, ‘Holy s**t, there’s a lot of power in this show that has no power!’ And then when drones are flying around and they’re all shooting machine guns at each other, I’m like, ‘Who am I’?” he admits.
“And so, I really like getting back to basics and creating a storyline that I know will sustain; that I know is going to have some really interesting and provocative mysteries,” he reveals. “You can get to some of the interesting questions that I’m interested in asking; which is like ‘What is America? Who gets to decide what the future of America will be? Is there a God? What happens when you feel destiny close in on you? And then all the issues about family, civilization versus savagery. We have this wonderful new warlord played by Matt Ross, who is the creepiest warlord. His backstory was that he was headmaster of a boys’ school when the blackout happened, and he’s left with 200 kids, a thousand miles from their home, and he just raises them Lord of the Flies style.”
Kripke feels that the world of Revolution was not explored enough in the first season. “I feel we spent too much time in Season 1 talking about technology and machine guns, and talking about battles and war, and what we didn’t dig into was ‘Wait a minute. This is a really fascinating world.’ And people would evolve in all sorts of interesting ways, and we didn’t explore what I call ‘the documentary elements’ of this world enough… so, we’re really looking for story lines to give us that, too. I think it’s going to be a really interesting unfolding of storylines for Season 2, in a world that will feel grittier,” he says. The grittiness will start by dirtying up the characters a bit. “As much as everyone was bothered by how Noxzema fresh everyone looked… man, no one was bothered by that more than me. You should have heard me scream on the phone. But now we’ve fixed it, and I think it’s more interesting looking…. so far, I’m really excited about where we’re going.”
Also added to the arsenal for an improved Revolution are some big name writers, including Rockne S. O’Bannon (Cult) and Supernatural fan favorite Ben Edlund. “I wanted to bring in big guns, and I have a very formidable writers’ room now, with bringing back all of the geniuses like Paul Grellong, and David Rambo, and Anne Saunders, and all the rest, and now to bring in Rockne, and Trey Calloway, and Bed Edlund… to be fair, I did go to Ben last year,” he recalls. “I was like ‘You! Come! Ben!’ and he was like ‘I’m under contract with Supernatural, and how dare you poach from your own show!’ And he was right, and I backed away immediately. But, I think Ben was looking for a new change, and Ben is Starsky to my Hutch, so I’m always more comfortable, to be in a room that Ben is in. I’m thrilled that he has joined us. And as expected, he comes in the room and Day One, he is pitching the wildest [stuff], and the rest of my writers who have never worked with him before? They all just kind of throw him a work like ‘Huh!’ and I was like ‘THIS IS THE GUY’!” he enthuses.
This team of writers will all work together to juggle a fairly large cast — something Kripke sees as “a gift.”
“My last show [Supernatural] had two characters who were literally in every scene, and when you’re busting out, like, the 100th episode of that show, it’s exhausting for them, and it’s exhausting for you, and now it’s amazing what they’re doing with it,” Kripke says, adding that Revolution has some new characters this year in addition to the ones that are coming back. 
He does, however, point out that aside from Charlie, Neville and Jason being off in different places, most of the characters will be congregating in a town called Willoughby, Texas — Rachel’s home town. “Then all of the [stuff] starts to go wrong from there,” Kripke says. “It gives us a really wonderful opportunity to be a little more focused and dig into character. The ‘road show’ part – which, I love road shows; all my shows have been road shows – but it didn’t let you really have characters that you really got to know and understand and unveil and have twists – and [having] some of our characters in one location for at least a bunch of episodes has really been invigorating for the show, oddly, because they can unveil things, and they can have twists, and we can play [stuff] out. It’s been very gratifying,” Kripke says.
Revolution Season 2 begins September 25 on NBC. Come back soon for more interviews!
