Powers Season 2 is now available in the PlayStation®Store! It really seems like they’re gonna be going bigger and bolder this year. Powers has always been an interesting balancing act. The heart of the series is the police procedural elements. Powers isn’t afraid to go epic and cosmic, but it makes a point of keeping things grounded in the world of police work to provide scale and perspective. Season 1 spent a lot of time building that world with detective Christian Walker and Deena Pilgrim, then everything went crazy in the finale with the giant battle against Wolfe. If the things we’ve seen so far about Season 2 are true, it looks like the show is gonna keep building and doubling down on the craziness.
This trailer got me so excited that I squealed like a small child and I am not embarrassed about that. Obviously, there are SPOILERS for Season 1 of the TV show and the first six collected volumes of the comic below… but seriously, you should have read those anyway because they’re all on comiXology. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
Holy Crap, SuperShock!!
The BIGGEST thing we’re seeing in the trailers is Michael Madsen added to the cast as SuperShock, a legendary hero in the comics who’s treated as a sort of analogue to Superman. If you haven’t read the original series, his character is hugely important in “The Sellouts,” the sixth volume of the series’ original run. The SuperShock arc is kind of the first real huge game-changer in a series that loves to upset its status quo every couple of years. The basic gist is that he’s a century-old superhero with the powers of a god, whose body has remained in peak physical condition while his mind has deteriorated into senility. After killing several members of his former team (an homage to DC’s Super Friends), he goes on a destructive rampage to “fix” what he believes are the problems with the world. He puts a stop to war in the Middle East by wiping Israel and Palestine off the face of the Earth, and then for an encore, he melts the friggin’ Pope.
Honestly, it’s exciting enough that they’re doing SuperShock, but damn, they got Michael Madsen? It seems like they’re taking a slightly different angle with him than the comics, and the trailers show Walker asking SuperShock to come out of retirement. It seems kind of like they’re doing a Superman in Kingdom Come thing with him instead of going straight-up Irredeemable, which should be interesting. Madsen has been one of Hollywood’s under-appreciated treasures since Reservoir Dogs, and I can’t wait to see this grizzled old cowboy doing an aging superhero.
The Growing Cast
Season 1 of Powers started out with a great cast… sadly we had to say goodbye to my personal favorites Michelle Forbes (Retro Girl) and Eddie Izzard (Wolfe), but it looks like Season 2 is doubling down on character actors beloved in nerd media. In addition to Madsen, we’re also getting Enrico Colantoni (Galaxy Quest, Veronica Mars, no I don’t care that he’s more well-known for Flashpoint and Person of Interest, he will always be Mathesar to me) playing Senator Bailey Brown. His character will be an ex-superhero named “Cobalt Knight” who becomes a driving force in anti-Powers legislation.
Tricia Helfer (best known as Six on Battlestar Galactica) will be joining the cast as FBI agent Lange. In the comics, Lange is an ex-hero turned government agent who is often called in to deal with Walker and Pilgrim’s cases when they get too big. This role has made her both an ally and antagonist to the detectives. There’s not a lot known about her on the show yet, but it seems like she and Walker have had some sort of shared past.
Wil Wheaton (do I even need to say it?) will be joining the cast as a “mysterious and powerful” character. There hasn’t been a lot released about Wheaton’s role yet, but he seems to be acting as a sort of mentor figure to Calista Secor in her role as the new Retro Girl.
Rounding out the cast is classic “oh it’s that guy” William Mapother, who you recognize from a million things even though you don’t know his name. You remember Ethan from Lost, right? That’s the one I’m going with. Mapother will be continuing his streak of playing creepy violent weirdos by portraying Calista Secor‘s abusive father. Now that she has superpowers and is returning to face him again, I can only assume they will politely reconcile and she will forgive him after he apologizes for all of his past behavior.
“Full-Blown Powers Gang War”
It looks like the show is gonna be skipping ahead a little bit in the comics. Following the SuperShock incident (in the comics), the President decided to pass laws making all use of super-powers illegal. The series was also relaunched with a new #1 to reflect the new status quo. You can only see it for a brief second in the trailer, but a news report says we’re gonna see all of that going down in Season 2.
This is happening at the same time as the death of Retro Girl, which means there’s a huge power vacuum with the city’s greatest protector gone. It’s looking like open warfare in the streets as normal people begin turning on Powers, and Powers are forced to fight back. There are only a couple glimpses of this in the trailer, but it looks like Walker and Pilgrim are gonna have to deal with a massive super-powered riot, and that should at the very least be awesome to watch!
Thanks for reading! For more information on Powers, check out the Powers Wiki on Wikia!
