We spoke to Hanna creator David Farr about season 2 of the Amazon Prime show, which is streaming now.
Some spoilers for Hanna season 1 follow.
Our first sighting of Hanna was on the big screen. This genetically enhanced teen assassin – living off the grid with the man she believed to be her father – was the central character in Atonement director Joe Wright’s 2011 spy thriller. But the movie’s co-screenwriter, David Farr, always felt there was plenty more story to tell – enough to carry Hanna’s TV incarnation into its upcoming second season.
“I always had in my head that I wanted to tell the story of where Hanna really came from,” David Farr, creator and showrunner of the Amazon Prime show, tells us. “[I wanted to look at] the fact there were these other young girls who hadn’t been rescued, that had been left behind. They were being trained in this facility to go and do assassinations. The film didn’t have enough time to get there, but they left this huge opportunity where you could retell the story and go way further with the character.”
An audacious mission to save other teen super-soldiers created by the sinister Utrax programme changed everything for Hanna (Esme Creed-Miles) in the Hanna season 1 finale. Erik Heller (Altered Carbon’s Joel Kinnaman), the former CIA operative who saved Hanna from the US government and raised her as his own daughter, died from his injuries in the skirmish. That left Hanna and new ally Clara (aka recruit 249, played by Yasmin Monet Prince) on the run and alone in the wilderness.
“With Erik gone, Hanna has a very interesting choice,” says Farr. “Does she hide away in the forest? She tries it but it didn’t work when Erik tried it with her, and it doesn’t work now with Clara. Or does she think about re-engaging with that Utrax world where – in a way – she should always have been. Does she just give up and go, ‘Okay, I am part of this, it’s the only family I’ll ever have’? That’s the central dilemma of season 2 and that’s the bit I knew I wanted to explore.”
It’s not a major spoiler to say Hanna does meet up with her “sisters” from the Utrax programme over the course of the eight-episode season 2. The teen recruits are now being trained at a top-secret facility known as The Meadows, developing the new identities they can use when sent into action in the outside world.
“I love conspiracy thrillers and the sense that there’s this unknown organization where you don’t quite know who’s in charge,” Farr explains. “They have this plan, which is terrifying – to create these young women who appear to be completely harmless, American college students who can go anywhere in the world. No one will bat an eyelid, but they can do the state’s bidding. That’s what Hanna could buy into. I love that idea – it’s slightly sci-fi, but it’s also weirdly, terrifyingly believable in our crazy world. Also, it puts our lead character Hanna into such a dilemma, because if she doesn’t do that, she’s completely alone.
