HARTFORD – Fans of FOX’s serial killer drama The Following that watched the Monday evening Season 3 premiere may have thought they were watching a completely different show when it first started.
Seasons 1 and 2 each started with exceedingly bloody openings, the first depicting a prison guard massacre as the sadistic Joe Carroll escapes lockdown, and the second depicting a subway train massacre as acolytes of the presumed-dead Joe attack innocent bystanders in his name.
Season 3, however, starts with a seismic, tonal drift, leading with a bright and cheery wedding, showing Ryan Hardy (Kevin Bacon) happy and in deep like (maybe love) with a pretty ER nurse (Zuleikha Robinson). There is some foreboding as a surly-looking waiter eyes the happy Hardy with menace and then frightens his pretty nurse with stilted questions about Hardy’s actions in Season 2. Fans of the previous seasons were probably shocked when the waiter finally confronts Hardy, not to kill him or anyone else, but to simply toss a handful of (most-likely) animal’s blood on his face before breaking down into tears over the death of his daughter during the final raid in Season 2.
“We wanted to really make the show accessible to an audience that hasn’t seen Seasons 1 and 2, but also give the real hardcore fans a satisfying entry point,” producer Marcos Siega explained to Yahoo TV. “We decided to go back to what I thought were our best episodes in Season 1, which had more suspense and less on-camera violence. I think we went a little bit too far last year.”
According to Siega, there will be a lot more “compelling character stuff and a lot more suspense and less gratuitous violence [in Season 3].” Series star Kevin Bacon told FOX 13 that Season 3 will be especially good for new viewers, because “you don’t have to have watched the first two seasons in order to find it exciting and interesting, and if you have seen the show, you’re a fan of it, you won’t be disappointed.”
Watch FOX 13’s full pre-season 3 interview with Kevin Bacon below:
