[Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Season 2 of Locke & Key.]
From co-showrunners Carlton Cuse and Meredith Averill and adapted from the best-selling comic book series by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez, the second season of the Netflix original series Locke & Key finds the three Locke siblings – Tyler (Connor Jessup), Kinsey (Emilia Jones) and Bode (Jackson Robert Scott) – navigating life as keepers of the keys that were hidden throughout their ancestral home, Keyhouse. As they continue to test the power unique to each key, they also learn that they might not have completely shaken the demons that they thought they had defeated.
During a virtual press junket for Season 2, Collider got the opportunity to chat with co-stars Jessup and Darcy Stanchfield (who plays the Locke matriarch Nina) for this interview, which you can both watch and read, about what they’re most excited about with the second season, how different their characters feel now, their personal favorite visual moments in these new episodes, coming to terms with what it will mean to forget the existence of magic, and how Tyler’s decision at the end of the season could affect things in Season 3 (which has already been shot).
Collider: I appreciate you talking to me about Season 2. It was great to get to see new episodes again.
CONNOR JESSUP: It was nice for us to shoot them.
DARBY STANCHFIELD: Yeah, we enjoyed making them.
The first season seems like it was out a lifetime ago and now the second season is coming out.
STANCHFIELD: A whole global pandemic happened in between.
Yeah, it’s crazy. So, what are you most excited about fans getting to see with Season 2?
JESSUP: What I had the most fun doing this season was just the initial shock of this world and what it is and what these keys are and what they mean and who these people has worn off a little and we have our sea legs now. We got to come into Season 2 and just have more fun in this world. That was really enjoyable for me, as an actor. I hope that people watching will feel something like what I felt shooting it, which is just that they know these characters, they know the concept, they know the world, and now we can just play, and it’s freer and more open. It takes us into more exciting places because those rules are already there.
STANCHFIELD: For me, there’s a couple of things. There’s a new issue of power that the Locke siblings have to grapple with. In Season 2, there’s the forging of new keys, or people attempting to do it, and the audience gets to find out who can make them and who can’t, and why these characters are making them. Those are fun issues to get to see the characters explore for the audience. I also love the way Dodge has shaped-shifted into Gabe. It’s a completely new villain energy this season. Laysla [De Oliveira]’s Dodge in Season 1 was fantastic, but was so obvious. Her Dodge wore a black rope and was in your face. This Dodge is undercover and subtle and has dark plans and it’s all very secretive. That’s a different form of evil that the Lockes have to confront, which makes it more intense.
You guys have not only done a second season, but you’ve also done the third season, and in that time, these characters have taken pretty big individual and life journeys. How different does the character feel now, from when you first started playing them, on day one?
JESSUP: Quite different. It’s funny, to go with a character for that long. It’s like when you buy a new pair of jeans and it barely fits and like it’s not quite right., and it’s tight in some places and loose in others. And then, you wear it for awhile, and suddenly it almost feels like a different pair of jeans.
STANCHFIELD: Yeah, it’s like a second skin.
JESSUP: It’s a silly analogy, but I think it’s pretty accurate. By the end of Season 3, especially, I felt like this character is just lived in. I felt like I understood him more intuitively. In Season 1, there was so much thought in every episode and every scene about, “Where is he now? What’s he thinking about? What’s he worrying about? Where’s he coming from? Why is he saying this?” That was really present. In Season 2 and even more in Season 3, a lot of that just felt more natural. It was just there and it was clear, and it didn’t require a whole bunch of digging to find it.
STANCHFIELD: I love Nina Locke. I love her heart. I loved playing her back-to-back, in Seasons 2 and 3. Part of what made these two seasons so special for me is that I really like this cast and I like the connections that I have with my fellow actors. I find working with Connor Jessup, Emilia Jones, Jackson Robert Scott, and the whole cast truly, really easy. It’s just organic. I have really sharp instincts with each of them. I like them as individuals. I think it’s a really great bunch who’s talented. So, to get to create with people that I enjoy, both personally and professionally, I feel like you can go deeper, in a way. Nina Locke’s heart, for me, is not just something that I put on, but I found it through these people. That’s what made it special for me.
You have some wild things going on this season, from a giant spider, to a large glass used to trap a person, to creepy mannequins, to the destruction of that insane house toward the end of the season. What was your personal favorite visual moment from this season?
JESSUP: There’s a lot of them. There was a nice rhythm, where once every two weeks of shooting, I would get to do something truly ridiculous, which is the best possible rhythm. It keeps you really having a lot of fun. At the end of Season 2, there’s a sequence, when that house is collapsing, where Emilia and I were suspended in the air for a long period of time, flying together. That was really, really fun. We laughed a lot. That image will always stay with me.
STANCHFIELD: And the visual of what the audience will see is truly stunning. Visually, it turned out. Our special effects on this did such a good job, so that moment stands out. For me, another moment with Jackson Robert Scott is pertaining to a key that I do believe is used by all of the Locke siblings. He’s pretty tiny and it has to do with something that makes him seem not tiny. It’s delightful.
Connor, this season, we see Tyler come to terms with what it will actually mean to forget magic. What was it like to explore that, especially in the relationship with his girlfriend and how heartbreaking it is to see them share this thing together, but for him to know that it’s just slipping away.
JESSUP: Yeah, the dawning awareness of transience is something that we can all identify with. Tyler really starts to feel, at the beginning of Season 2, that they’re approaching a cliff. So much of who they are, and his relationship with Jackie, and his relationship with his siblings, is built on his awareness of this magic. As he realizes that might go away, he wonders if all that comes with it will go away as well, and he starts to get really scared by that and what it will mean for him and for Jackie and for everyone. For him, it means more than just not being able to see or remember magic anymore. So much of his identity now is tied up in it. So much of his hopes in the future are tied up in it. So, I think it really starts to get to the core of who he is and what he’s scared of and what he wants. That’s his real core in Season 2.
He gets to a place, by the end of the season, where he makes the choice not to use the memory key and to have a normal life. What can you say to tease how that might affect things for Season 3 and whether or not that’s a decision he can even stick with?
JESSUP: By the end of Season 2, he’s been through so much pain that he realizes that he’s not equipped to hold that, at the moment. It’s easier to literally just drop it and to let it go. I don’t think he leaves Season 2 – or at least I didn’t feel like it, when I left Season 2 – with that resolved for him and that was the end. His relationship to these keys and his relationship to himself, by proxy, is not finished. So, going forward, he can run, but he can’t hide, as the saying goes.
Darby, if given the choice, would Nina choose to be aware of and to know about magic and the role that it plays in the lives of her family?
STANCHFIELD: That’s such a good question. I don’t think anyone’s asked that before. My instinct says that Nina would want to know. I think Nina wants to be connected to her children. I think that’s something that she needs, maybe even more so since Rendell Locke’s murder. She’s the only parent. In Season 1, she questions her ability to parent. She questions her ability to parent in Season 2 as well. She puts a lot of pressure on herself, but it just means so much to her. So, if given the choice, I think that she would like to know because then maybe she would finally start to get some answers.
It’s so hard to watch that dynamic because you can tell this family really loves each other, and it’s not even really lying, but they just know she’s not going to remember it.
STANCHFIELD: Yeah, it’s heartbreaking to watch the Locke siblings. Doesn’t Tyler even say, “We can have a mom who drinks and sees magic,” but they don’t want her to because she’s not well, and that’s not what they need and that’s not what she needs. It’s such a curse on this family that, for as much as they wanna be a family, they’re pulled apart.
JESSUP: There’s a sad moment for me. It’s not a huge moment in the show, but it stuck out to me when we were shooting it. It’s when we’ve been running away from this giant spider and Duncan is with us, and we come out into our ruined kitchen and he’s wondering what the hell has happened and he’s asking all of these questions. And Tyler says something along the lines of, “Just wait. Just wait a second.” It’s this inevitable loss, where it’s not even worth trying to connect with him about what they just went through together. There was something in the script that didn’t come across necessarily as sad, but there was something when we were playing it that just felt hugely sad to me. He has this person, and multiple people, who wishes could be there for him, with him, to help and they just can’t. The inevitability of that loss struck me, in the moment, as pretty sad.
I felt the same way watching that moment between Nina and Bode, when he gives her this gift so that they can walk through her memories, but he also know that only he will remember that moment and she won’t. There’s something so emotional and moving about that.
STANCHFIELD: Yeah, the way Jackson played that, you could see it written all over his whole being. It was really quite moving to see.
Locke & Key is available to stream at Netflix.