"Continuum" fans, rejoice: the hugely popular sci-fi show about a foxy cop from the future is back this weekend with Season 2.
Last season's action-packed finale left the show's die-hard fans eager for more. Star Rachel Nichols, who plays main character and cop-from-the-future Kiera, promises that the new season will not disappoint. "Season 1 was calm on the roller coaster scale compared to Season 2," she says.
HuffPost Canada TV pressed Nichols for as many details as possible about what we'll see in Season 2. While she was understandably tight-lipped about the major plot points, she did let it slip that there will be plenty of relationship drama, trust issues and moral dilemmas. Sounds like good TV to us!
The show has been so successful! What kind of feedback have you been getting from fans? What has them so hooked?
The beauty of the show is that it's so multi-faceted that any TV fan enjoys it. There are the sci-fi elements, there's the time travel, there's the procedural element, the crime-solving. It's also very character-based, and I've found in my interaction with fans, they love the characters. There are so many characters on the show. You've got your goodies and your baddies and your in-betweens. Everybody can find somebody on the show they can relate to.
What can we expect from the new season?
The second season is very interesting. Obviously the first season was very centered on getting home. I wanted to go home. I would be friends with the baddies, I would partner up with Liber8, whatever it took to get home. It's obviously still important to me in the new season. However, the theme of Season 2 is responsibility. Kagame had a speech at the end of the last season about how, if you drop a pebble on one side of the world, it will become a tsunami on the other. For Keira that's very, very important, because she wants to get home to her husband and her son. Very early on in season 2, she starts asking questions: what am I going to be returning home to? Am I costing my husband and son their lives? Will they never be born? Will I never be born because of what I'm doing now? It's a lot to wrap your head around! [Laughs]
No kidding! In the first episode of Season 2, other characters refer to Kiera as a vigilante. How do you see her? Is she still a cop at heart?
It's interesting. In the year 2077, where we find Kiera at the beginning of the show, Season 1, she's very clear on who she is, the battle that she's fighting, black and white, good vs. evil, she's on the right side of the law. She comes back and throughout the first season she's shown a different world, and starts to see that even though Liber8's tactics may not be the best, or the most humane or appropriate, there's this grey area that exists in this time period. She really has to assess whether the future she lives in could be improved by changing the things that are happening in the present day. At the beginning of Season 2, she's a lone wolf. Vigilante? Yeah, kind of. She works better without being constrained by the confines of modern law enforcement.
How has her relationship with Carlos changed?
I would tell you, but then I would have to kill you! [Laughs] It gets stronger. It changes. She relies very heavily on Carlos in Season 2. She needs him to be her friend, to be her co-worker.
What's going on with Alec this season? He's an interesting character because he's so young and he's going through all of this strange stuff...
Yeah! Imagine someone coming to you when you were 18 saying you're going to become this person, and it may not be a great person, but a brilliant person, a very successful person, a person who runs the free world. He's got a complicated life. We shot his stepfather at the end of the last season, he's got a delinquent, scheming, Liber8-supporting stepbrother. His mom is torn between the two, and Alec is very concerned about what he becomes in the future. Can he still do good things and not become a bad person ... or is he a bad person? He goes through a lot. Kiera needs him very badly, but he is scared that in being there for her, he is becoming the man he doesn't want to become. I try to help, but I'm not super helpful because I do have my own agenda -- I do want to get home. And for me to get home, I need him to follow the same path. It's very complicated! [Laughs]
The Liber8 team seems to be pretty shaken up. What can we expect to see from them in Season 2?
Oh, Liber8! They will never cease to amaze and entertain. There's a lot that went on at the end of the last season. Then there's the Kellog debate, which many fans were not happy with. That's still around. He's sort of the middleman, as far as the crossover between myself and Liber8. And Kellog is very intensely involved in Season 2. I can't tell you why! You'll know within the first couple of episodes.
Has Kiera adapted more to her place in time, or is she still very much a fish out of water?
She's definitely adapted. She's learning more, she's adapting more, but there's still definitely the fish-out-of-water element as well.
I know that sci-fi fans can be pretty intense. Have you had any memorable encounters with fans of the show?
Sci-fi fans are awesome. They're very smart, they like to be involved, they like to ask questions. I've been asked questions I don't even know the answer to. I've never had any aggressive interactions. I've had lovely interactions. At Toronto Fan Expo, a guy actually brought a caricature that he had drawn of Kiera that was so good I had it professionally framed and it's hanging in my house in L.A.
Season 2 of "Continuum" premieres on Showcase on Sunday, April 21 at 9 p.m. ET/PT in Canada. It premieres on Friday, June 7 at 10/9 p.m. ET/CT on SyFy in the U.S.