#‘Snowpiercer’ Season 2 Adds Sean Bean, But His Character Is a Big Spoiler for Season 1

The first season finale of Snowpiercer just aired last night on TNT. The television adaptation of the Titan Comics title takes place eight years before the feature film adaptation from director Bong Joon-ho, so there are a lot of gaps to fill in when it comes to the overall narrative of the post-apocalyptic landscape itself. Last night’s finale brought a number of twists and turns, but the biggest made way for the introduction of Sean Bean as a character who will have a major presence in the second season.

However, learning about his character will require spoilers for the first season.

While it’s been assumed that the train on which the show takes place contained all the remnants of humanity that survived the extinction level event from seven years before, the finale revealed that’s not the case.

Not only are there other survivors out there in the world, but they have a train of their own, and it’s led by none other than Mr. Wilford, the billionaire mastermind behind Snowpiercer who was presumed dead. That’s who Sean Bean is playing, and you can get a glimpse of him in this second season teaser:

Mr. Wilford was a character played by Ed Harris in the feature film adaptation, so the fact that he was presumed dead didn’t make much sense at first. Now that he’s arrived on the scene and will be played by Sean Bean, we know he’ll be a major part of the second season. And the good news is, unlike most Sean Bean characters, he’s not going to die, at least not while he’s played by Sean Bean. He has to turn into Ed Harris, after all.

This will create an interesting conflict for the second season since Melanie Cavill (Jennifer Connelly) has been acting in Mr. Wilford’s place while still keeping his moniker. Melanie doesn’t have a friendly relationship with Mr. Wilford – she’s the real engineer and creator of Snowpiercer, but Wilford took all the credit. Melanie left him behind to die when this long survival journey began, but he survived, and he’s commandeered Big Alice, a supply train with a prototype of the Eternal Engine that drives Snowpiercer. After Big Alice takes control of Snowpiercer, the two trains stop in the middle of Chicago, and that’s where we’re likely to rejoin them at the beginning of the second season.

Snowpiercer season 2 has already been ordered by TNT, and since the first season was delayed for so long, a lot of that second season was already completed before the first season even premiered. That’s why we’re getting a rare trailer for the second season as soon as the first season is over. And if you’re enjoying the Snowpiercer TV series, you’ll be happy to know that there are already plans to go beyond the second season. Showrunner Graeme Manson told Collider back in June:

“I think we have a good sense of what our Season 3 could be. It would be more about figuring out a Season 3 ending, whether it’s a cliffhanger to come back again, or not. I’m not sure. The end point, that flagpole that we put up, hopefully moves down the road with more seasons. Or you stick to that end point and figure out a reboot of the characters and the train. I’m not sure what that would look like.”

As far as later seasons rebooting the characters and the train, that’s not an impossible situation considering how much time there is until they catch up to the movie, but it doesn’t seem like the best way to approach the source material. After all, the Snowpiercer movie already accomplished a lot of what the TV series is going for, but the world is just expanding a bit. Speaking of which, Manson sees no end to the possibilities of what you can do with Snowpiercer. He said:

“There are as many Snowpiercer stories as there are trains that you can imagine. I think it’s a franchise that you could reboot, in a different time, on a different train, or with a different cast. With this cast, let’s hope that we’re looking at five or six seasons.”

Five or six seasons? In this climate? Let’s wait and see how the second season pans out before we get carried away.

Cool Posts From Around the Web: