‘Beacon 23’ Showrunner, Star Break Down the Season 2 Premiere and What Happens After [SPOILER]’s Death
This article contains spoilers from the “Beacon 23” Season 2 premiere and teases what’s to come.
Season 2 of “Beacon 23,” the series based on another of “Silo” author Hugh Howey’s books, launched this week on MGM+. The sci-fi series’ first season (now also available on Amazon’s Prime Video) ended with Aster (Lena Headey) being shot with a blast that sent her flying back, hitting her head on a railing and leaving her in mortal danger.
“Beacon 23” showrunner Glen Mazzara and star Stephan James broke down where the show’s been and where it’s heading next in a conversation with TheWrap.
When Season 2 picks up, we quickly see that, yes, it appears that Aster’s injuries are fatal as she bleeds out, eyes open. The character was notably a co-lead in the first season.
“Aster’s spirit, the spirit of what Lena Headey created in the first season, it really looms throughout the second season,” James said. “In a really, really cool way, the audience is able to have a necessary closure with Aster. For me, it was definitely sort of a spiritual experience, just going through the throes of some of those moments without her.”
While initially each having their walls up, Aster and Halan (Stephan James) eventually let each other in. Now, the series explores what happens when Halan has to say goodbye to his closest ally.
Connecting in the void
Season 1 had a lot of setup to do, as Mazzara noted, “When you have a genre show like this, it’s required to set the terms of debate, explore what is the mythology it’s about, world-building.”
Now that the space lighthouse’s environment has been established, the show can focus on developing its characters. That includes Halan being aided by Aster’s personal AI, Harmony (Natasha Mumba), as well as connecting with new addition, Iris (Ellen Wong).
“The show has always been about human connection, and about identity through empathy and compassion,” Mazzara said. Both seasons are “about broken people who are washed up on the shore and they’re stuck together.”
Having Iris there to push Halan keeps a tension at the center of the story similar to what he had with Aster. That includes carrying her body into what becomes the space equivalent of a burial at sea — while leaving open questions about whether there might be some path open for Aster’s return.
“What was interesting is that we had these two characters of Halan and Harmony who were so tied to Aster,” Mazzara said, “and you can’t tell their stories without having them reflecting back on their time with her.”
Constant reinvention
The show features several format-breaking episodes this season, focusing on Harmony in its upcoming second episode as well as Aster continuing to play a background presence throughout the show. The first season’s seemingly spiritual ending, showing Aster connecting with a younger version of herself, also gets revisited later in the season.
“You’re really on one location with limited characters,” Mazzara said of the space lighthouse setting. “We worked very hard to push the story forward and make sure that no two episodes were alike, that every episode feels different. And I would say in Season 2, every episode sort of reinvents the show.”
That includes Season 2’s second episode, which focuses on the Harmony AI in a situation that may remind some viewers of Apple TV+’s “Severance” and its strange office environment.
“We were confident the story would work, and Natasha is a fantastic actress,” Mazzara said. “We want to give her her day, her moment in the spotlight.”
He described the episode as a “curveball” for the series. Still, Halan continues to provide the season’s backbone.
“We were always very mindful of Halan’s journey back from his lowest point, his darkest place,” Mazzara said.
The AI conversation
An artificial intelligence version of one of the characters, Milan Aleph (Eric Lange), becomes the big bad for this season — a dark counterpart to Harmony’s more compassionate AI. This allows the show to delve deeper into its exploration of artificial intelligence. While far different from the AI currently making headlines in our own world, the show is able to add its own perspective to the ongoing hot topic.
Watch Halan and Aleph share one of their first confrontations as they talk about the loss of Aster — and Halan’s own path forward — in this clip from the season premiere, below:
“When I signed on to the show, I hadn’t really thought a lot about AI,” Mazzara said. “It was something off in the distance to me.”
He credited “Beacon 23” creator Zak Penn for developing much of the show’s initial AI storyline.
“We dove in and Zak was pushing us to really explore that,” Mazzara said. “Since we’ve shot those scenes, AI has become such a part of the conversation.”
Going into the WGA and SAG strikes, despite working on the show, Mazzara was surprised to see how much of an issue AI became in those union negotiations.
“I’m proud of what we came up with, because I feel like we did really do our job and explore the different possibilities, not just hitting the usual sci-fi tropes of evil AI,” Mazzara said. “We’ve seen that with ‘Terminator’ and a lot of other great movies and shows.”
He also compared his own surprise at AI’s growing influence with how it’s surprised society as a whole.
“It’s there, you don’t really understand it. And then boom, all of a sudden it’s all around you,” Mazzara said.
“When you’re acting these things out, at a certain point in time, the lines start to blur a little bit and you start asking yourself those questions — like, what is possible?” James added. “Over the last few years, the growth of AI in the world and understanding that this is something that could be … all these things are things that could be when our intelligence gets greater than what we can control.”
James also said that getting to explore ideas such as the potential threat of AI is “the beautiful thing about sci-fi.”
“It challenges your imagination in a way,” he said, “where you’re actually invested because of just how grounded it all seems to be and rooted in real life.”
The actor credited Mazzara for being “the beacon of the story,” as well as praising co-showrunner Joy Blake, especially for how prescient they were.
“Maybe they were on to something with a lot of this stuff,” James said. “It feels real, it feels very palpable, especially from an acting perspective.”
Uncovering Halan’s past
Mazzara promised that this season pushes deeper into Halan and Harmony’s characters. While the show continues the first season’s pattern of telling stories from different parts of its timeline, he noted that they wanted to make sure the main timeline had more action this time around.
This season delves into Halan’s origin story, giving an emotional arc to a character who previously remained quite mysterious.
“I really wanted to close the loop on a lot of things that were opened up in Season 1,” James said. “It was a deeply personal season.”
“One of the things that was important was really to bring Halan down to his lowest point,” Mazzara explained. “And then, how does he come back from that? How does he regain his humanity? It’s through connecting with other people, and that’s a difficult process.”
James said that he had questions about the character going into Season 2 himself, but was excited to get the opportunity to explore personal areas like Halan’s relationship with his father. We also learn more about his military background and the rest of his life before arriving at Beacon 23.
Mazzara praised James’ acting in those more personal moments for Halan, saying, “I mean, he really shows this character’s pain and vulnerability, and journey back.”
You can watch that journey now. The “Beacon 23” Season 2 premiere is available on MGM+, with episode 2 arriving this Sunday. You can also watch Season 1 on Prime Video.
Watch the trailer for Season 2, below:
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