‘Spartacus: House of Ashur’ Creator on What Happens to Ashur in Potential Season 2

[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for the Spartacus: House of Ashur Season 1 finale, “Hail Caesar.”]

Creating an alternate universe of Ancient Rome leaves a lot of room to rewrite history. Steven S. DeKnight did just that in the thrilling final scene of Spartacus: House of Ashur Season 1 finale, in which Ashur (Nick E. Tarabay) and Julius Caesar (Jackson Gallagher) go to blows in a fiery battle during a powerful rainstorm.

Ashur had been tolerating degradation from the Romans in Capua all season. No matter his position of power as the dominus of a ludus with a successful gladiatrix and more heralded fighters, Ashur was still a lowly Syrian in the eyes of Rome’s leaders. He lost his seat at the table of Capua’s elite after the murder of Gabinius (Andrew McFarlane), whose brother, Servius (Adam Gardiner), finally arrived and took over the grieving Viridia’s (India Shaw-Smith) and Cossutia’s (Claudia Black) lives.

When Caesar denied Ashur his reward for the unwilling part he played in the murder of Viridia’s father, Gabinius, Ashur reached his breaking point. Ashur and Caesar fought to the death, and the Syrian won. He killed the guards before falling Caesar, leaving no witnesses. The season ended with Ashur saying, “Hail Caesar” over Caesar’s dead body. The murder is a secret for now, but DeKnight tells TV Insider that keeping the secret is Ashur’s top priority in a potential second season. As of the time of publication, the Starz drama has not yet been renewed, but DeKnight has already written the next season.

“Things go in some very unexpected directions,” he tells us.

The episode also featured an epic fight in the arena between two gladiatrixes: Achillia (Tenika Davis), the “Goddess of Death” from the House of Ashur, and the Amazonian Scythian (Annie Mossman) from the devious House of Proculus (Simon Arblaster). Achillia won the battle in honor of the murdered Celadus (Daniel Hamill), her lover, and then things got hot and heavy with Tarchon (Jordi Webber), Celadus’s son…

Here, Spartacus mastermind DeKnight answers our burning questions about the finale and teases what’s to come in a potential Spartacus: House of Ashur Season 2.

You’ve already written Season 2. Are you confident you’ll be able to make it?

Steven S. DeKnight: I’m feeling pretty confident. Worldwide, the show seems to be doing very well, so we’re just waiting for the green light. I know all the actors and the crew, we’re all chomping at the bit to get back to New Zealand and start shooting the next chapter.

Especially since basically every character ends on a cliffhanger, except for Korris (Graham McTavish). I’m sure you’ve got plenty of ideas ahead for him, but I feel like Opiter’s (Arlo Gibson) death and the aftermath were the climax of his story in Season 1.

Yes, we’ve got some very interesting stuff planned for Korris next season. I love Graham McTavish. I still pinch myself. I wrote the role for him. I’m still shocked we got him. He’s such a delight and so great as that character.

To talk about the finale’s final moments, we see Ashur kill Caesar. Is this a progression for the character of Ashur, or a regression?

It’s a little of both, actually. Throughout the season, Ashur has just been getting worked over by the Romans. He’s just been taking it on the chin nonstop, and he’s been trying to work somewhat within the rules of the Romans because he wanted to be so desperately accepted by them. He finally snaps at the end, and by killing Caesar, he’s really making that statement that he’s no longer concerned with the acceptance of the Romans. He’s now going to make the Romans bow to him, so it’s very much Ashur unleashed, leading into Season 2.

Ashur was seen as a traitor in the original series, and I’m sure he’ll be seen as a traitor by some for killing Caesar, even though, for him, it was justified. It feels like, if he didn’t kill him in that moment, he’d be betraying himself.

Yes.

Can you talk about subverting the definition of Ashur, the traitor, in this series?

Ashur becomes, I won’t say the hero, but definitely the protagonist. It’s not like suddenly he’s reborn as this nice guy. He’s still Ashur; he’s trying to suppress some of his more baser instincts to maneuver through this very powerful Roman upper strata. But by the end of the season, he realizes that’s getting him nowhere except kicked around. So yeah, it’s basically taking Ashur and again, not suddenly transforming him into a great guy. He’s not a great guy, but there are people who are a lot worse than him. Caesar being one of them, so [we’re] charting that journey of how he’s going to maneuver. He had to do a lot of bowing and scraping this season, and he’s pretty much done with that.

Achillia’s helmet is knocked off very early in her battle against the Scythian gladiatrix in the finale. When you’re writing the scripts, why is it important to have her in this vulnerable position early on in this climactic moment?

It’s exactly that. It’s to make the character more vulnerable and for the audience to get a clearer look at the emotions that are going on.

What did you really want to bring out in this fight between the two women?

We introduced this beast of a gladiatrix, the Scythian, in Episode 8. You know it’s going to build to some kind of confrontation in the arena. I wanted the first gladiatrix-on-gladiatrix fight to be something mythical and epic, and also show again that Achillia does not win easily. I think her greatest strength is she will not give up. And we wanted to loop around to Tarchon, actually reluctantly at first, helping her get this revenge. He’s able to put aside his own emotions towards her to avenge his father’s death.

And then you have them get together in the end…

Yes, but as you notice, as they get together, is it love or is it grief of the moment?

That’s what I was going to ask.

It didn’t look like love to me!

It looked like there was some hate involved in there, too, because of the kind of rivalry they had going on before.

A little bit, yes. There’s a lot of emotions going on there that bubble over, and where that takes us into Season 2 will be an interesting thing to explore.

I’m sure Ashur will have to deal with the fallout of killing Caesar immediately in Season 2. How does Caesar’s death set up whatever you have planned for Cornelia (Jaime Slater)?

At this time period, if you’re not married or you don’t have a pater familias, a head of the family, a male to basically oversee you, you’re kind of cut adrift. She’s slightly different because she is so rich and powerful, but she will still need to align herself with a powerful Roman man.

For Ashur, the big thing is if this ever gets out that he killed Caesar, he’s a dead man. So he’s got to make sure that nobody ever finds out what he’s done. Now, of course, I highly suspect Cornelia is going to be very suspicious about where her husband has disappeared to. So that’ll be a plot line we’ll be following.

Crassus was mentioned a lot this season, but never seen. Do you have any plans for Simon Merrells to appear in Season 2?

I can say nothing except I love Simon, and if you go back to the original series, Crassus is mentioned for like three seasons before you see him.

Gabinius’s brother, Servius, comes in at this final moment and has really taken over Viridia’s life. Talk about the Servius-Viridia-Ashur complications we’ll see in Season 2.

It’s always great to throw in a monkey wrench to any romantic proceedings, and Servius is a huge one. Servius represents much closer to what an actual Roman pater familias would be. Gabinius was much more progressive in the way he related to his daughter and his wife. Servius is old-school; he’s not having any of that, and he obviously thinks very, very little of Ashur. It was such a fun character to write, to have this absolutely horrible person drop in as we set it up early on, talking about your brother, your brother’s just so horrible. And just to have such a wonderful actor come in and nail that, where you instantly know who this guy is and instantly dislike him. We do a lot of fun things in Season 2 with Servius.

Were you on set when that fiery, rainy Ashur and Caesar battle was filmed?

I was not; I was back here in LA working on some posts for the show. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get back for that big fight, but I was avidly watching dailies and just absolutely thrilled. It was, as you can probably guess, not an easy fight to shoot, particularly when they’re in the rain, that rain is freezing cold, and it took several days to shoot that fight. Very, very difficult. But Allan Poppleton, our stunt coordinator, and his team and the actors just did a fantastic job. And Rick Jacobson, my man Rick Jacobson, just shot the hell out of it. I could not have been more thrilled with the way that turned out.

Was it always the plan for this ending to be the moment where Ashur fully unleashes his real power?

Yes. As a matter of fact, when I called Nick up about three years ago now to say, “Hey Nick, what are you doing for the next five or six years? You want to do House of Ashur?” I pitched him, “And Season 1 ends with you murdering Caesar, and the last line is, ‘Hail Caesar.'” That really hooked him. We’ve been planning it for a long time, and it’s so great to finally have the audience get to see what we cooked up.

Is it exactly how you pictured it?

Oh, it’s way better. Way better. Again, Allan Poppleton and Rick Jacobson and the actors and everybody, they did such a bang-up job. It was 10 times better than I ever imagined.

Spartacus: House of Ashur, Streaming on Starz