One really is the loneliest number—and this could not be more evident than in the Season 3 premiere of Penny Dreadful.
“This season it’s all about the individual journeys. Everybody has their own demons to confront, deal with and hopefully try to overcome,” says Co-Executive Producer Chris King. “Season 1 was all about these characters coming together and creating this family. Season 2 was building the family even more, bringing them even closer together, and then ripping them apart. Season Three is all about each one trying to understand who they are inside, but also realizing they need each other, and eventually bringing all of them back together.”
However, this eventual family reunion might take a while. Especially since the Showtime drama concluded its second season with half its characters flung far across the globe: Sir Malcolm (Timothy Dalton) returning Sembene’s (Danny Sapani) body to Africa, Ethan (Josh Hartnett) being sent back home to America to face his father, and the Creature (Rory Kinnear) sentencing himself to a life of isolation in the freezing depths of the Arctic.
But as the season-opening hour revealed, these characters will hardly be making their journeys back to each other alone. Thanks to the introduction of a few new characters—namely, Dr. Seward (Patti LuPone), Dr. Jekyll (Shazad Latif) and Kaetenay (Wes Studi)—and the reintroduction of a familiar face (Sarah Greene’s Hecate), they’ll have some company on the long road ahead of them.
“Everyone has their pair,” says King of the partnerships that will begin to form on the show. “We’ll see Vanessa and Dr. Seward pairing up together, Ethan and Hecate, Dr. Jekyll and Frankenstein, Dorian and Lily. It’s very interesting pairings of unique characters that bring out differences in each one of them, and they also mirror each other as well. That’s what’s really fascinating about this.”
With these new duos in mind, read on as King previews what’s in store for the sprawling third season.