While it's been two years since American fans watched the Season 1 finale of Robert Kirkman's Outcast, it won't be long before they'll be treated to more. On July 20, Outcast will finally return to Cinemax, though these new episodes already aired in the UK last year.
When Season 1 of Outcast came to a close, Kyle (Patrick Fugit) had finally escaped the small town of Rome, West Virginia with his daughter Amber (Madeleine McGraw), set on finding a new home where people didn't know about their supernatural connections. Meanwhile, Reverend Anderson (Philip Glenister) believed he was killing mysterious preacher Sidney (Brent Spiner) by setting fire to his trailer, only to learn it was another poor soul that suffered from the consequences.
Now, with the show returning, it's time for the characters to own up to the decisions they made last season. "I think some of the most exciting stuff that I was looking at where we were getting into season two is seeing the fallout of the decisions made at the end of season one," Fugit says in a group interview. "There's some stuff that's extreme decisions, good ones, bad ones, really bad ones. And then horrible accidents and stuff like that. So season two is trying to get back to level, trying to get everybody back to where they can fight the darkness and that sort of thing. So there's a lot of consequence that has to be dealt with."
The fallout from those decisions will bring two characters back to a very familiar setting, as Kyle and Amber both return to Rome in the Season 2 premiere. "At the end of the season, you start to realize, as Amber and Kyle try to bail out, that this possession phenomenon is much more broad spread than Kyle would've thought," the actor teases. "And so obviously he goes back to Rome, because he's like, 'Well, leaving town isn't going to work...'"
According to Fugit, that small town is paramount to executive producer Robert Kirkman's idea of the series and the comic book it's based on. "Robert's always liked the idea that this takes place in Rome, West Virginia, that we're not cutting to the Vatican having some expert exorcists flying to America to investigate this stuff," he explains. "I think he likes the idea that it's a large scale but a small town. And that sort of thing. And so all the evolution of the characters and everything happens in Rome."
As for what the evolution of Rome will look like after Season 2, that remains unknown. While a third season of Outcast has not been ordered at this point, Kirkman does have in mind how he wants the story to end--unlike his TV adaptation of The Walking Dead. "It's not gonna go on, as many seasons [as The Walking Dead]. But that's by design; like this is a story that has a beginning, middle, and an end," Kirkman says. "I knew the ending of the story before I started the first issue before I started the pilot, and we've been working towards that, every minute along the way and so it's just a much more contained story. It's not a sprawling zombie epic and crazy apocalyptic world."
Outcast Season 2 premieres Friday, July 20, at 10 PM on Cinemax.
