How Comic-Con Led to Those Celebrity Members of ‘The Order’ in Season 2
Spoiler Alert
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers through Season 2, Episode 8 of The Order, “Spring Outbreak, Part 2.”]
The Hermetic Order of the Blue Rose, the magical secret society of the Netflix fantasy, has a few celebrity members—which led to a ’90s teen show reunion in Episode 8.
As The Order Season 2 neared the end, Councilor Kepler (Françoise Yip) decided to call for a vote as to whether Vera Stone (Katharine Isabelle) should be Grand Magus and lead the society. It was when some of the council supported Vera that two Beverly Hills, 90210 stars were revealed as members: Jason Priestley and Ian Ziering.
Those cameos came about as of 2019’s San Diego Comic-Con. When production company Nomadic took the casts and crews of The Order and Van Helsing out for dinner, Chad Oakes invited Priestley and Ziering along because they’d worked together. The Order creator Dennis Heaton has also worked with Priestley in the past.
“As we were talking about what we were writing for Season 2, we always had the joke in Season 1 about, ‘What celebrity members are there in The Order?'” Heaton told TV Insider. “I thought it would be hilarious to reveal that the whole reason why 90210 exists is because of a secret society.” (“Everything you have is because of us,” Kepler reminds Ian in the show.)
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And yes, it was because this all came together at Comic-Con that appearances at the event became part of the negotiation so Ian would vote for Jason as the next Grand Magus. The two took shots at each other’s careers—Jason said Ian “couldn’t use magic to salvage his career,” while Ian brought up his six Sharknado movies and called his former costar “Mr. I’m Famous in Canada”—before Kepler played mediator. Jason had to agree to limit his convention appearances for Ian’s vote.
“Jason and Ian were both up for it,” Heaton said. “We got them up [to Vancouver] and had fun and told the entire crew that if anybody posted a photo of them together, they’d have to be taken out into the field and sacrificed.”
But the fictional Jason Priestley didn’t survive the episode. Instead, he was one of a few who died after being infected with an Egyptian homunculus beetle. After it all worked out for Vera, to think Ian for his support, she bestowed “greater riches and fame” upon him with a spell making him look like Jason.
“We had fun with that,” Heaton said. “I was glad they were both up for that joke.” They had a couple endings in mind, but this one came about when they were almost ready to shoot. “Having worked with Jason before, I thought it would be hilarious to kill Jason Priestley in the world of The Order, and then have this pickle of, ‘how do we replace Jason Priestley in this world?'” the creator explained. “I think it was one of the other writers [who] went, ‘Why don’t we use the magic we’ve developed in this other episode and they turn Ian into Jason?’ and I was like, ‘Sold!'”
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And it is possible that if The Order is renewed for a third season that we could see either or both Priestley and Ziering appear again, “especially if there’s a fun reason to do it,” Heaton said. After all, Ian has Jason’s face in-show, but they can also bring anyone back from the dead with magic. “Now that Jason Priestley is part of the world, why wouldn’t we see him again?”
The Order, Season 2, Streaming now, Netflix
