Cast, showrunner hint at what's next on 'Falling Skies' at Comic-Con

Falling Skies is halfway through its fourth season, which saw a lot of changes from season 3, along with the addition of new showrunner David Eick. With the 2nd Mass separated after an Espheni attack, our ensemble cast found themselves in very different worlds from one another.

“In Tom’s world we were in darkness. Lexi’s world—it was light. It was almost like Munchkinland,” Eick said during the show’s Comic-Con panel. “In Anne’s world it was very gritty but stripped down.”

At Comic-Con, Eick and the show’s cast hinted at what’s to come on Falling Skies now that the characters have reunited. Most important to know right off the bat? As Sarah Sanguin Carter (Maggie) said on the panel, “The second half is gnarly, you guys.”

Here’s more that Eick and the cast revealed on their panel:

We’ll learn more about Anne’s past. A clip from this coming Sunday’s episode screened during the panel, showing a moment Anne had blocked out: when Karen captured her and Lexi. Karen (yes, she’s back, briefly!) is holding Lexi, apparently lovingly, just like a mother would, saying, “She’s my creation. In time, she’ll be just like me. She’ll change the face of history.” Moon Bloodgood (Anne) told the audience that there will also be scenes featuring Anne with her son, something she really enjoyed filming because “we never really understood what life was like for her before the invasion…. It was probably my favorite episode to shoot.”

The Espheni aren’t united anymore. In recent episodes, it’s become clearer that the Espheni aren’t a purely, totally villainous species. They’re going the way of the skitter — a creature that the 2nd Mass eventually learned could be an ally or an enemy. When teasing what’s to come with that, Eick really showed his Battlestar Galactica, TV-as-social-commentary roots: “These characters are not of one mind. They’re not just a hive-like simplistic being. They might have differences with one another. They might have feelings for one another. They might have jealousies that could get in the way of their agenda. In season 5 we’ll explore that further.”

Lexi will go through a transformation. Another clip from the next episode showed Pope, Hal, and others bringing guns into the once peaceful Chinatown. They try to get to Lexi, but Lourdes and others devoted to the hybrid block them by link arms—much like the 2nd Mass linked arms to protect the sympathetic skitters in season 2. Cut to Lexi: She’s inside a glowing, orange cocoon. “She’s gonna go through a change,” Scarlett Byrne (Lexi) explained of her character. “What did I call it, Moon?” Bloodgood then deadpanned, “Your period.”

Turns out Bloodgood had a Bloody Mary before the panel—her showrunner ratted her out. “I did! I really did!” she confessed. But in all seriousness, Byrne explained, “[Lexi] steps into her own. She’s constantly changing, but this is the beginning of a very drastic physical and mental change for her.”

How will this blossoming love triangle turn out? The cast didn’t divulge many details about what’s going to happen between Maggie and Ben. But Drew Roy (Hal) did say this: “It’s one of the more special things we got to do on the show just because we had to pay special attention to our motives, to what we were doing and make sure it had a good payoff. Week-to-week, even inside one episode, you could be pulling for this part of the triangle or this part of the triangle.”

Hybrid babies and mutating humans into submission is just the beginning. Eick said fans can expect to see more “new variations on existing species. The Espheni are very immersed in genetics, the idea of altering, the idea of adapting, and corrupting, mutating. It’s a terrifying idea, one that resonates. It does feel like a kissing cousin of where we are in real life. Hopefully it’ll scare the s— out of you.”