With The Originals back on The CW, Vincent/Finn (Yusuf Gatewood) is on the loose and hell bent on revenge while Kaleb/Kol’s (Daniel Sharman) motives are much more questionable. Meanwhile, Klaus (Joseph Morgan) lets Cami (Leah Pipes) in on the secret he’s been keeping, and Hayley (Phoebe Tonkin) and Jackson (Nathan Parsons) devise a plan to bring the vampires and werewolves together to consider a truce.
While at The CW portion of the TCA Winter Press Tour, executive producer Michael Narducci spoke to Collider for this exclusive interview about where things are headed next, where the dangerous threats are coming from, where things are at with Kol and Davina (Danielle Campbell), balancing hero vs. villain with Klaus, Klaus being the dad from hell, that you’ll start to see what distinguishes baby Hope from any other child, Rebekah’s (Claire Holt) situation, and Cami as family therapist. Check out what he had to say after the jump, and be aware that there are some spoilers.
Collider: On a show where everyone is always in peril, what can you say about where things go next?
MICHAEL NARDUCCI: Right away, Finn is going to make a pretty dramatic move that puts everybody in danger, and our heroes are going to have a pretty severe response to that. And so, you’d think, going forward, that Finn is going to be the big villain and that he’s going to use Mikael to get done what he needs to get done. But then, he slowly starts to pick off some of the people we love the most. It’s not too much of a spoiler to reveal that Marcel and his vampire community are going to be in a lot of trouble. That’s going to be the next few episodes. At the start of the season, it was all about the return of Esther and Mikael, and it was Original family centric. Now, Charles Michael Davis is going to have an opportunity to really step up and deal with some really tough things. He’s going to have to make some difficult choices and show what makes him special as a leader to the vampire community. At the same time, Klaus going to have to decide, for the first time in his existence, if he’s willing to kill one of his own siblings. He’s daggered them before, just to get them out of the way. And Finn, interestingly enough, was the vampire that he daggered for the longest because he was so problematic and so troublesome. Now that Finn is in a mortal body, there’s no way to dagger him, so he’s going to have to eliminate him, once and for all. That’s the choice that he’s going to be forced to make, and you’ll see how that all plays out.
There’s also Esther’s sister, who would be after Hope, if she knew that the child existed.
NARDUCCI: We hinted at some things, at the beginning of the season, particularly in the flashbacks to Esther’s youth in Episode 6, and what she had to do in order to have this family. She had to give up her first born child to her sister, who is a very mysterious witch. Somewhere out in the world is this dangerous threat, and we’ll be seeing that again this season. I think that that is going to have explosive ramifications for the nucleus of Elijah, Klaus and Rebekah.
Where are things at with Kol and Davina?
NARDUCCI: Kol has got a really interesting journey, coming up in this first run of episodes, with Episodes 10 through 14. It’s just really amazing stuff between him and Davina, and you have to wonder where Kol’s allegiances are. Is he going to be true to his family, or does he have his own agenda in mind? And is that tied to Davina? Does he have true feelings for her, or is he just manipulating her? All those questions are going to be answered in that first run.
Because he started out as a pretty heinous villain, as Klaus finds more and more of his humanity, do you always think about balancing that and not making him too much of a hero?
NARDUCCI: Yeah. When I worked on The Vampire Diaries, we talked about how Damon was a sociopath, except when it came to Elena. He loved his brother, but he didn’t really have to worry about his brother. He would do anything to protect Elena. With Klaus, I think he loves his family, but he doesn’t have to worry about them, usually. The person he has to protect, no matter what, is Hope, his daughter. So, he will do and he is going to do the most despicable, deranged, disgusting, maniacal and manipulative things, but you’ll understand why he’s doing them because it’s in defense of his child, who we know is going to be in danger. So, the question you have to ask is, who’s coming for this child? Finn knows, and he’s going to figure out that Klaus has a secret. If Finn becomes a threat to that child, in order to pay back Klaus and to get his revenge on Klaus and to lure Klaus into a trap, in order to prevent Dahlia from tracking him down to New Orleans, Klaus is going to have to decide what to do to his own brother. Klaus is also going to have to decide what to do, if he doesn’t agree with the decisions that Elijah is making and that Hayley is making. Everybody wants to protect the child, but Klaus might not agree with their strategy for what’s best for the child. He has his own agenda. I have a daughter, and sometimes my wife and I have pretty intense discussions about how we should raise our daughter and what the best thing is for our daughter. So, we wanted to play what Klaus’ version of that would be, if he disagrees with Hayley and he disagrees with Elijah, and he thinks he knows what’s best. If he disagrees with Rebekah, who has been a primary caregiver to this child, what would he do to best protect that child. That’s a lot of what we’re going to be dealing with, going forward.
Klaus started to feel for Caroline, and then again a bit for Cami, and now he’s got Hope.
NARDUCCI: Right. You know that cliche of the dad who has the shotgun and anybody who wants to date his daughter, he’s going to pick up that shotgun and say, “Oh, so you want to date my daughter?” Klaus is the protective father from hell. That is who he is. He will not trust anybody. He’s not going to let anybody worm their way into Hope’s life, even Jackson. Jackson may be about to marry Hayley, which means Jackson would become a stepfather to Hope. How will Klaus react to that? I think you can guess that he’s not going to be too pleased about it, and that puts Jackson and Klaus on a collision course.
How will everyone react when they start to see what Hope is actually going to be capable of?
NARDUCCI: You will start to see what distinguishes Hope from any other child, and it’s part beautiful with potential and it’s part a little bit frightening. That’s going to raise goosebumps. People are going to start to wonder, if this child is not raised responsibly, she could fall into the wrong hands and be used. A witch could take her and raise her to be whatever. And Klaus is like, “No, my child is going to be fine. I’m going to take care of my child.” So, he’s the protective father from hell.
Where is Rebekah at now, and how is she going to get out of her situation, which clearly didn’t turn out the way that they had planned?
NARDUCCI: Kol totally pulled a fast one that was revenge against Rebekah for her part is his betrayal, a hundred years ago. He put her in what’s basically a mental asylum. It’s a home for wayward witches, prisoner witches and criminals. Now, she’s trapped in another body and in this place that she can’t get out of, and she’s surrounded by crazy, deranged, mixed up witches. How does she react, and what is she going to do? It’s one of my favorite storylines of the season because there is something else in that house, beyond just the other witches. How Rebekah will be playing with that secret and that haunting something else is going to define her, as a character, going forward. You’ll see that old Rebekah sparkle, with how she reacts to that.
As a human, Cami’s life is always in danger. Could she ever get to a place where she could lead the human faction?
NARDUCCI: Two things that I think are most interesting about Cami are that she is an O’Connell, which means that she inherits the legacy of Father Kieran, who is a big mover and shaker among the human population. They have not only a record of all the supernatural stuff, but they have all of these collected dark objects and all of this information that they could use to have a sway in New Orleans. Also, I think of Cami as the Dr. Melfi of our show. With Dr. Melfi on The Sopranos, a lot of her job was to put some of the family conflict into perspective. And right now, we have Klaus, who’s on a tear, and Elijah, who’s not quite stable. Elijah is trying to deal with what his mother did to him, and that’s a psychological issue, so who better to play a part in helping Elijah out than a psychologist. If this is the story of the most screwed up family of all time, Cami is a very overwhelmed family therapist. Those are the two positions that she’s in.
The Originals airs on Monday nights on The CW.