In Episode 318 of The CW series The Originals, called “The Devil Comes Here and Sighs,” Klaus (Joseph Morgan) is taken hostage by dangerous foes that threaten the entire Mikaelson family. In an attempt to get their brother back, Elijah (Daniel Gillies) and Freya (Riley Voelkel) join forces while Hayley (Phoebe Tonkin) and Cami (Leah Pipes) set their own risky plan to rescue Klaus in motion.
During this exclusive phone interview with Collider, executive producer Michael Narducci talked about how the events in Episode 317 will set things in motion for the rest of the season, the wake-up call for the Original family, the very real chance that not everyone will make it out alive, Lucien’s plan, Freya’s journey, Klaus’ feelings about Elijah and Hayley, whether the Originals can ever atone for their sins, and which questions fans can expect answers to, by the end of the season. Be aware that there are spoilers.
Collider: A lot went down in Episode 317, “Behind the Black Horizon.” How will that affect things in Episode 318, “The Devil Comes Here and Sighs,” and through the rest of the season?
MICHAEL NARDUCCI: In Episode 317, we saw Lucien become this all-powerful, unkillable, unstoppable, super-strong vampire beast that has a bite infused with this highly toxic, super werewolf venom and white oak that can even kill an Original. And he killed an Original when he killed Finn. So now, not only is our family mourning the loss of Finn, but they know that they’re in as much jeopardy as the days when they were being hunted by Mikael. There is a clear and present threat out there, and for the first time in a thousand years, they don’t have to worry about being daggered, they don’t have to worry about being locked in a tomb, and they don’t have to worry about being on the run for the remainder of their long lives. They may die. It’s a real wake-up call to be faced with your own mortality. How everybody responds is a testament to their own character.
When you create something even worse than this seemingly indestructible Original family, should we assume that there’s no chance that everyone could possibly make it out alive?
NARDUCCI: You should assume that. I think that was a part of the tough decision to kill off Finn. We needed to prove definitively that an Original can die. Now, everybody is in danger. We always knew that our other vampires were in danger. Hayley is in danger, Marcel is in danger and Cami is in danger, but we also have to know that Klaus, Elijah, Kol and Rebekah are in danger, so is Freya, and so is the baby. This is what’s so frightening about Lucien being out there. He’s had a thousand years to plot his revenge. He’s thought of every iteration of how this could play out, and he wants to wipe this family away.
When you started the whole sire storyline this season, did you know from the beginning that Lucien would ultimately turn out to be the best in the prophecy?
NARDUCCI: I’ll say two things. One, his name is Lucien. It’s so similar to Lucifer that I thought it was maybe a little bit too on-the-nose, but we just fell in love with the name. We knew that this was always going to be his plan. We knew that he was coming to town and warning Klaus of the very prophecy that he, himself, had intentions of enacting, and that he would start off as this Iago figure and slowly build to being this mastermind who was the one that wanted to destroy the Mikaelsons. We know that he made two of these special blood serums. He’s had one, and he’s died and been reborn as this super-vampire. He’s become this beast. There’s another one out there, so what has become of that serum? Is there another person who will be reborn and become a beast? I don’t want to say definitively that Lucien is the fulfillment of the prophecy. We still have quite a few episodes to go this season.
Since she came back into the lives of her siblings, Freya hasn’t really had a moment to decide who she is or what she wants, outside of helping save her family. Will we see her have her own exploration for what she might want for herself?
NARDUCCI: Yeah. Freya was someone who was raised in a highly abusive situation. She was old enough to remember being kidnapped by her Aunt Dahlia, and then she was basically raised to be an acolyte of this very dark, very sinister, very paranoid, very angry, very evil witch. She was basically just Dahlia’s power source. She didn’t know love, but she had a memory of love, from her father and from her brother, Finn. From what we know from Season 2, she escaped Dahlia, she tracked down her family, she put herself into hibernation, and then she woke to meet her family and guide them in their battle against Dahlia. Now that she’s here, her goal is to make peace between Klaus and Elijah, and to bring the family together. I see Freya as every bit as dangerous, cunning and manipulative as Klaus, but her overriding desire is to be a matriarch to her family and to lead them back to being a peaceful, co-existing group. Once she has that, then we might explore her other interests, in terms of whether there’s a romantic relationship in her future.
We saw her at the beginning of this season where she was enjoying partying a lot and going out and having a good time because she had just woken up after a hundred years of deep sleep. But mostly, she really just wanted to be extremely close with Elijah and try to shore up her relationship with Klaus. Going forward, it’s almost like Freya is, in some ways, the mom, and she sees her little brothers and little sister as the people she needs to safeguard and protect, but she’s also the only witch, so she’s forever going to be a little bit of an outsider. That is something that may trouble her and that we may need to talk about and resolve. But going towards the end of the season, of all of our characters, she will make one of the most difficult decisions and be put in an impossible moral dilemma where she has to choose between saving her family and committing a very heinous act. I think viewers will be shocked about what she decides to do, and will wonder about where that puts her on the spectrum between hero and villain.
Would Klaus like to see Hayley find happiness with Elijah, knowing the feelings that are there between them, or is he at a point where he would prefer the mother of his child find a family that might be a little safer to be around?
NARDUCCI: That’s a great question. I think that Klaus definitely senses that there are feelings between Elijah and Hayley. He knows how busted up and brokenhearted Hayley is, after the death of Jackson. He sees his brother yearning for Hayley, and he sees Hayley yearning for Elijah. I think you will get, at some point in an upcoming episode, a moment where Klaus voices his perspective on that. Klaus is a complicated character. He absolutely wants everybody to put him at the center of their universe. But he’s also growing, changing and evolving, especially because of the influence that Cami has had on his life. I really enjoy Klaus’ perspective on what he wants for Hayley. I think it will make a lot of viewers happy.
What big questions do you want to answer by the end of this season, and what should we be thinking about as we’re waiting for Season 4?
NARDUCCI: Thematically, this season was all about how those poor souls who came into the orbit of the Mikaelsons were fundamentally cursed, just as the Mikaelsons were cursed. It’s very dangerous to be an associate, ally, friend or loved one of a Mikaelson. We lost a lot of people, along the way, this season. Jackson died, and over the course of time, Tristan was buried at sea. Now, we’re getting to a world where some of our other allies are definitely being placed in jeopardy. Cami was turned into a vampire. Freya has been abducted and shot and buried alive. And as we move into the end of the season, we have to wonder whether the vow of “always and forever” is a beautiful thing, where you place your family above everyone else, even at the cost of others, or whether that kind of behavior leads to injustice that will someday be answered, whether you want to believe in karma, or you just want to believe that, if you make enough enemies over the course of history, those enemies will come back to haunt you and destroy you. Given that that’s the case, can this family survive? Is there any atonement that can make up for the sins they have committed, over the course of history? How will the Mikaelsons deal with the return of their greatest enemies and the sins they have committed and the fall-out of everything they’ve done to honor their vow of “always and forever”?
The Originals airs on Friday nights on The CW.
