‘The Ark’ Bosses Unpack Explosive Finale & What It Means for Season 2
Spoiler Alert
[Warning: The below contains spoilers from The Ark’s Season 1 finale Everybody Wins.]
To say the crew of Ark One has been through some stuff since their unexpected early wake-up call is an understatement. We’re talking about a lack of supplies (food, water, medical), mechanical issues, asteroids, attempted coups and mutinies, murders, and mysterious illnesses. Out of catastrophe and immeasurable loss, friendships and romantic relationships were severed and formed.
Set 100 years in the future, The Ark sees a colonization mission to save the human race go awry. Leadership aboard Ark One perished from a disastrous breach in their chamber. Awaking prematurely from their cryo-pods, lieutenants Sharon Garnet (Christie Burke), Spencer Lane (Reece Ritchie), James Brice (Richard Fleeshaman), and Felix Strickland (Pavle Jerinić) must find a way to ensure their remaining crew’s survival.
By the finale, Garnet had taken on the role of captain with things seemingly moving in the right direction after a deal was brokered with Evelyn Maddox (Jelena Stupljanin)’s Ark 15. Yes, the ship that was responsible for so many Ark One and all of Ark Three deaths.
Maddox may be a villainous megalomaniac, but she is a woman of her word. Despite a mutual agreement to share Proxima b in place, Ark founder William Trust’s (Paul Leonard Murray) plans don’t go as planned. The planet exploded, leaving Ark One badly once again in distress. Their only hope was Maddox, who sends the cavalry. A thank you for Ark One curing her of deadly illness and saving her own ship.
Needless to say, there is a lot to digest after the finale. So we called in reinforcements, creator-showrunners Dean Devlin and Jonathan Glassner.
Jelena Stupljanin as Evelyn Maddox (Aleksandar Letic/Ark TV Holdings, Inc./SYFY)
Congratulations on the recent renewal. I think there would be a lot of bummed fans if the season finale didn’t have a follow-up.
Dean Devlin: If it didn’t get renewed, I would have found somewhere else to do the show. I wasn’t going to let the show die no matter what. SyFy has been such an incredible partner for us…It gave us confidence that we were going to make a hit out of this thing.
With Ark 15 coming to help Ark One, is there a potential that they’ll allow them to come aboard their ship?
Jonathan Glassner: You’ll have to wait until next season to find out. We’re working on the stories now. We want to keep multiple Arks out there. We are devising ways to do so. That’s all I’ll tell you.
Dean: The only thing that’s certain is uncertainty.
From one leader to another, do you think Evelyn sees a little bit of herself in Garnet? I don’t think she is used to pushback and not getting her way.
Jonathan: I think it’s the opposite. I think she sees what she kind of wishes she was in Garnet. She is selfish, everything is about her. Garnet is the exact opposite of that. She is about us and saving the whole world and humanity and not just her. That’s sort of the lesson at the end of the season when Garnet goes to save her. She sees that. Evelyn never thought that way before.
Dean: We’re living in an age right now of a lot of self-made billionaires. Evelyn is an inherited billionaire. She has never known the ways that the others on Ark One have. So when she is talking to Garnet, it’s like she is talking to an alien. She doesn’t understand how someone wouldn’t try to kill her at every moment of the day.
This is a sci-fi show at its core, but there are a number of heavy topics explored like addiction as was the case for Dr. [Sanjivni] Kabir [Shalini Peiris]. She felt immense pressure as the only surviving medical doctor on board amid crisis after crisis.
Jonathan: It came out of the idea that after Dean’s pilot, I was looking at the situation. I was thinking, “What would it be like to be the only doctor left on this ship and be responsible for all these peoples’ well-being? The unbelievable pressure. Even after the crash, there were a lot of injured people. She can’t sleep and has to deal with them all. She happens to be in a place where there are pills that maybe help her along. Her weakness got the better of her. It also gave us a great opportunity to play real friendship with the way Strickland helps her through it and the way Garnett accepts it. I always loved writing about those caring friendships.
You’ve been applauded in terms of representation? Was there a concerted effort regarding the diversity of the crew?
Dean: There is a lot of diversity in the show, but it was never done for the sake of diversity. We didn’t have a checklist. We had stories we wanted to tell. We met brilliant actors of all different nationalities and races and picked the ones that represented the characters the best. That ended up being a diverse cast. Nobody forced us to make Strickland gay. We always saw him as being part of the character. It wasn’t to make sure we did something inclusive. We just thought it was a cool storyline.
This season there were characters on the show you thought would last but didn’t. Was there anyone who you really deliberated about if you wanted to keep alive or not like?
Dean: We love actors so much that every time we kill an actor we’re banging our heads against the wall. Even in the pilot with Jasper (Chris Leask), we fell in love with the actor. And thought, “Maybe he is not totally dead.”
Jonathan: Same with Baylor Trent (Miles Barrow). The actor knew what would happen to his character when he took the part. That he was only going to last that long. He had such great chemistry with Alicia, but you know you got to do what you got to do.
Stacey Michelle Read as Alicia Nevins, Ryan Adams as Angus Medford (Aleksandar Letic/Ark TV Holdings, Inc./SYFY)
Alicia [Nevins] (Stacy Read) and Angus [Medford] emerged as fan favorites. The finale saw a hint they were finally getting together. What do you make of their evolution through the season going from background players into key figures on the crew’s team?
Jonathan: It’s always fun to do a will they-won’t they storyline. There are so many classics like that on television. I think of Sam and Diane from Cheers. Those two have been playing their roles perfectly. What they do with just a look at each other is very valuable. But they may not get together. You’ll have to watch and see.
Funny you mention Sam and Diane. You get that vibe from Eva and Brice where their playful chemistry evolves into something serious.
Jonathan: Yeah, they are going to have a lot of things thrown at them next season. We’ll see how they deal with that.
Samantha Glassner as Kelly Fowler –(Aleksandar Letic/Ark TV Holdings, Inc./SYFY)
Jonathan, your daughter Samantha does a great job as Evelyn’s murderous daughter. How fun was it for you to see her take on this role?
Jonathan: It has been an interesting ride. I’ve always resisted putting my daughter in what I do, and she has always wanted me to since she was five years old. She has always wanted to be an actress. As we were writing this character the writers kept pitching things about the character and I pitched things. Then in the writer’s room one day I said, “What we are describing is my daughter. She will never forgive me if I didn’t let her read for it.” She read for it like any other actor. I probably said to Dean about a dozen times, “Is she good?”
Dean: She wasn’t just good. She was so good we ended up changing the part because the part was only supposed to be a two-episode arc. Soon as we saw footage from the set. I thought the character was too delicious and we could get a lot of mileage on this. You love to hate this character. It’s great.
She is in a coma-like state now. Can we expect her to wake up?
Dean: Expect the unexpected.
What do you want to see explored for season 2 now that the characters are fleshed out a bit?
Dean: On a lot of these other shows you see this amazing bond between the captain and the crew. Our show was they have no relationship with each other at the start. They don’t know each other. Part of the fun of this is watching these relationships grow. Some are going to grow stronger. Some are going to grow combative. I think that’s the interesting thing. How do they get there?
Jonathan: One of the things I’m finding fascinating as we’re discussing season 2 in the writer’s room is the notion of when is somebody redeemed. We have this character Maddox, who killed half the people on this ship and everyone on Ark Three. But she is the one who is rescuing Ark One at the end of the season. What do you do with that? Do you say thank you? Or do you say, you mass murderer? I don’t trust you. So we’re playing with that a lot. It’s interesting.
The Ark season 1 is streaming on Peacock
The Ark season 2, TBA, Syfy
