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[WARNING: Spoilers from Orphan Black‘s season-two premiere, “Nature Under Constraint and Vexed”]
Orphan Black started off the new season with a few eyebrow-raising reveals.
Felix’s assless chaps deserve their 15 minutes of fame, but unfortunately for Sarah, she started off the season “in a rather similar position than when we met her at the start of the series,” co-creator Graeme Manson tells The Hollywood Reporter. “She’s on the run, she doesn’t have her daughter, she barely has a dime in her pocket and has very few places to turn.”
STORY: ‘Orphan Black’ Stars and EP on Shady Allies, Clone Crushes and Season 2 Secrets
But after discovering that pro-clone Rachel lied about taking Mrs. S and Kira in order to lure Sarah to the Dyad Institute, Sarah found herself in an even worse predicament. It wasn’t until the final seconds of the episode that it was revealed Kira was in fact with a faceless man in a room somewhere with a video camera.
Alison, dealing with the ramifications of playing a part in Aynsley’s untimely death by garbage disposal, found herself taking over the lead role in a musical that cuts a little too close to home. (Who knew she’d be the one to have connections to a “gun enthusiast” named Ramon?) Perhaps one of the biggest surprise was Helena’s non-death and the introduction of a new sect of the Proletheans, the same religious group with which she grew up.
Manson breaks down the biggest moments from the season-two premiere and hints on what’s next.
1. Helena isn’t dead!
Sarah may have shot her own sister at the end of season one, but as it was revealed in the closing minutes of the premiere, everyone’s favorite murderous, crazy-haired blonde clone — somehow still alive from her gunshot wound — managed to make her way to the hospital. Though viewers never actually saw Helena’s lifeless body, it was assumed that Helena suffered the same fate of Katja and Beth. It was always the plan to not have Helena’s presumed death stick. “It was always part of the evil plan in the beginning,” Manson says. “We knew we wanted to bring it down to a climax where Sarah kills Helena at the end of season one and we knew we wanted to bring her back.” But how did Helena survive? That will be further explained in episode three.
VIDEO: ‘Orphan Black’ Season 2 Trailer: ‘Cosima Will Suffer’
2. Rachel doesn’t have Kira
Back to square one. After believing for most of the episode that Rachel had abducted Mrs. S and Kira from their home, that turned out not to be the case. As Manson tells it, Sarah’s search for Kira is only just starting. “She’s just at the beginning of it. She’s at the very beginning of unwinding that. It’s going to take us all season,” Manson says, adding that what Sarah goes through is “a point of utterly heightened desperation.”
Sarah’s desperation reaches maximum level. “Nothing’s going to stand in her way. The rash, bullheaded, blow things up, lay waste Sarah that we’ve come to know — she’s turned up to 11,” he adds. “She’s up against someone, Rachel, who has all the power and she has none. It’s an interesting start to the season to pick the most powerful clone against the least powerful clone.” The question of Paul’s loyalties continues to remain, as Manson explains: “Paul may be an opportunist but he’s also a guy who’s stuck between a rock and a hard place trying to serve a couple of masters.”
3. A “modern” group of Proletheans?
The diner deaths introduce the possibility to Detectives Arthur Bell and Angie Deangelis that a new sect of the Proletheans, under the same banner group from which Helena was raised, is responsible and may prove dangerous. “The Proletheans that we knew headed by Tomas [in season one], in our new season they are a different branch,” Manson hints. “They’re I supposed a more modern version of Tomas’ world view and they’re far more willing to use science in the name or equate science and religion as the same thing or conflate them or use science to their own ends.”
4. Alison’s a ticking time bomb
It’s rather genius that Alison finds herself the star of her local community theater’s latest musical production, a role she takes over — not by choice — after Aynsley’s death. (For the record, the musical isn’t Cats!) The premise for the musical (in a nutshell, centered on a murderous woman) is a heightened version of the nightmare that has consumed Alison, who attends Aynsley’s funeral in next week’s episode amid worries over her inept monitor/husband Donnie. “Alison is in deep denial and she is wound tightly to the point of snapping. And when she does, sparks are going to fly,” Manson says.
Orphan Black airs Saturdays at 9 p.m. on BBC America.
Email: Philiana.Ng@THR.com
Twitter: @insidethetube
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