In an interview with Digital Trends, The Ark cast and crew discussed what to expect in the upcoming episodes and how they tackled new challenges in season 2.
When we last checked in on the crew aboard Ark One, things were far from OK. Ark One finally reached Proxima b, the planet that hopefully would serve as humanity’s next home. Unfortunately for the human race, Proxima b explodes, and the blast causes significant damage to Ark One. The final moments of The Ark season 1 finale saw Lt. Sharon Garnet (Christie Burke), Lt. James Brice (Richard Fleeshman), Lt. Spencer Lane (Reece Ritchie), and Alicia Nevins (Stacey Read) scrambling to find survivors.
The Ark season 2 jumps right into the aftermath of the explosion. While Ark One experienced several casualties, there are some notable survivors, including Felix Strickland (Pavle Jerinić), Eva Markovic (Tiana Upcheva), and Angus Medford (Ryan Adams). With the fate of the human race at stake, Ark One must pivot to finding another new home.
In an interview with Digital Trends, several members from The Ark cast and crew – including Burke, Read, Adams, and co-showrunners/executive producers Dean Devlin and Jonathan Glassner — discussed what fans can expect in the upcoming episodes and how they approached a new set of challenges in season 2.
Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Ark season 2’s premiere episode.
Digital Trends: As showrunners, what’s harder to do — start from scratch on the first season or build on the success of the first and write a second season?
Jonathan Glassner: You know, I think they’re both equally hard. You’re starting with a blank page and saying, “Oh, God, where are we gonna go?”
Dean Devlin: They’re very different challenges. The first challenge — can we make something that people are going to enjoy? But then, if they really enjoyed it, like the 6.5 million people that watched the first season, now you feel this responsibility to go to a whole ‘nother level. You owe it to them. So I think that they’re equally hard, but in very different ways.
Glassner: Yeah, I mean, I’ll tell you when you’re writing a season, the whole time you’re saying, “Am I writing us into a corner? Are we going to be able to do another season if we end this way?” We’re very careful about leaving a whole bunch of stuff to answer for the next season. This season, we started out already knowing that we had this, this, this, this, and this that we wanted to do. It’s just what order to put it in.
Christie, coming into this season, you already have this foundation [for your character] established in season 1. What was the prep like for season 2? Did a lot of things change? Were you able to step right into the character again because of the base you built in season 1?
Christie Burke: Well, I feel like I worked out more because I was like, “Oh man. I really got to beat up a lot of like seven-foot Serbian stunt dudes.” I was like, “I wanna really do that and make it look real because I do all my own stunts on the show.” So yeah, I got in the gym as lame as that sounds. [laughs] They just are so tall in Serbia! It’s crazy.
If you accidentally punch one of them, it’s like hitting cement. And I was like I want to be able to do that better. And yeah, getting excited for where they’re going to take Garnett this season. They take her to so many amazing places, and I felt like we had unfinished business with her. We didn’t know everything there is to know about her, and we still don’t by the end of the season.
That’s your rite of passage, fighting a Serbian.
Burke: 100%. That, and a three-page monologue to a crowd of Serbians who have no idea what you’re saying … I love it. [laughs]
Glassner: Christie was a stunt woman in another life.
