Intergalactic Comics: What We Know: The Shannara Chronicles

Wednesday, September 6, 2017

What We Know: The Shannara Chronicles – Season 2

By: Jaclyn Cascio (@jaclynator)

The noteworthy fantasy book series by Terry Brooks, “The Shannara Chronicles,” made its way to MTV for its premiere season in 2016. The beautifully produced show with up-and-coming talent has made a move for its second season. Read on to find out what we know about the upcoming season of The Shannara Chronicles!

While The Shannara Chronicles has continued to shoot in the gorgeous New Zealand – wrapping filming of its second season in June 2017 – the series has made a network jump from MTV to Spike. The first season of the series was well received, as reflected in ratings competitive with Teen Wolf’s season 5B. However, the Viacom-owned network saw an audience for the show with a median age in late 30s and a male skew, which led them to transfer the show to a channel that was more appropriate for the viewership the show received. In addition, Viacom has designated Spike (soon to become Paramount TV) as a scripted series network, while MTV will be scaling back its scripted television.

In a statement about the move to a new network, MTV said, “After much consideration, it was decided that the second season of The Shannara Chronicles will air on Spike. We’re honored to have worked with our extraordinary production partner, Sonar Entertainment, along with fantasy visionaries and executive producers Al Gough, Miles Millar, Jon Favreau, Jonathan Liebesman, and Dan Farah, along with executive producer and best-selling author of the book series, Terry Brooks. We’re pleased that fans of the beloved franchise will be able to follow the characters and epic story they love on its new network.”

So what’s coming for the sophomore season of The Shannara Chronicles? There was initially a lot of talk about the season moving on to the next book with a new group of characters. However, replacing characters for a new season didn’t bode well for maintaining fan support, so the team decided to build a story around the current characters, pulling elements from the books as needed or desired. Expect some story pieces about the Sword of Shannara and maybe even some bits about the Wishsong.

Season two will pick up one year after the first season of The Shannara Chronicles left off. The 10-episode season will show The Four Lands in turmoil as an organization called The Crimson hunts down magic-wielders. Season one’s hero, Wil (Austin Butler) has turned away from his destiny as a magical healer as he mourns the loss of Amberle (Poppy Drayton) and his separation from Eretria (Ivana Basquero). Meanwhile, Allanon’s (Manu Bennett) protégé, Bandon (Marcus Vanco), has gone dark side, trying to resurrect The Warlock Lord (which sounds like some serious trouble).

Check out the trailer for the season yourself right here!

It sounds like there some crazy trouble brewing in The Four Lands! Hypable had a chance to talk to Ivana Baquero about the upcoming season, and when asked about the structure of it, Baquero said, “There’s a lot of new evil and new elements coming up. So rather than being one quest and one story, now there’s a lot of storylines trying to contain this evil that’s trying to take over the world. It’s going to be very interesting.”

Amidst the trouble, Eretria is on a journey of self-discovery, according to Baquero. “I think, for Eretria, this season is mainly about discovering where she comes from, who she is, who her parents really were, what the tattoo means…”

If you’re wondering whether Amberle (Drayton) will be metamorphosing back from tree status to human form after her season one sacrifice, the answer, according to author Terry Brooks is, “Yeah, actually, although you might wonder how, and I won’t tell you, but we gave some serious through tot that, and there was a lot of talk about bringing her back out of the tree and so forth, but I said, ‘No, she’s a tree, you can’t bring her back, that’s terrible story-telling, you have to find a different way.’ So then I told them how they could do it, so we’ll see.” Drayton was around for filming of the show’s second season, so she’s definitely going to be around. Any guesses about Brooks’ plan to get the actress some work without taking away her tree status?

While some familiar faces will be around for season two, there’s a few new characters making their way onto the scene. The Shannara Chronicles will be introducing Mareth (Malese Jow), a young woman with magical powers who rescues Wil from an attack by The Crimson. The independent and intelligent woman will team up with Wil as he embarks on a journey to find Eretria. Meanwhile, Eretria will have a love interest in Lyria (Vanessa Morgan). We’ll also meet Garet (Gentry White), a charismatic and skilled weapons master and bounty hunter and Queen Tamin (Caaroline Chikezie), the ruler of Leah (the only human kingdom), and an ambitious weapons manufacturer. The cast of new faces is rounded out by General Riga (Desmond Chiam), once in Eventine’s army, but now a leader of the soldier group The Crimson after he watched people slaughtered in the War of the Races and his fighting against Dagda Mor.

With new faces, new haircuts, and a whole lot of uprising evil, are you going to tune in for season two of The Shannara Chronicles? If so, you can start watching on Wednesday, October 11, 2017 at 10pm ET on Spike.