Last year, when The Tick season 2 was filming in New York City, I was able to visit the set and watched a very cool scene featuring a number of superheroes in a tense situation. Unfortunately, the scene is from the season 2 finale, so while I’d love to say exactly what was happening, it’s a huge spoiler. Just know the world of The Tick has been expanded with new locations and characters in the second season – including a number of new heroes that may or may not be what they seem….

Shortly after watching the scene get filmed, I managed to get some time with The Tick creator Ben Edlund. During the interview, Edlund talked about the Season 1 finale, what fans can expect in Season 2, how much the series will focus on The Tick’s backstory, Miss Lint’s storyline now that the Terror is locked up, Arthur embracing being a superhero, some of the new characters introduced in season 2, Dangerboat and Arthur’s blossoming relationship, how the storyline changed during the season, and so much more.

Check out what he had to say below. The Tick also stars Peter Serafinowicz, Griffin Newman, Valorie Curry, Brendan Hines, Scott Speiser and Yara Martinez.

The Tick season 2 drops on Amazon Prime Video April 5th.

Collider: Am I wrong, or did The Tick start in the New England Comics newsletter many years ago?

EDLUND: Yes.

I remember it starting there and what is it like having something that you created that long ago finally sort of permeating into the culture now in a way that's arguably the biggest it's every been?

EDLUND: Weird. Cool. Good. It's very strange. This is a weird ... I'd say if I was on the outside of this, I would be interested in this because it's a strange phenomenon of one creator repeatedly returning to a thing in a variety of different mediums and sort of being allowed to do that. I don't know. It's been sort of a very fortunate kind of cyclical evolution and relationship that The Tick's had with an audience that started in a newsletter and then became a comic book audience, and then there's a variety of people for whom the cartoon is kind of woven into their childhood memories as a Saturday morning cartoon sort of ritual kind of thing, or as a stoner college ritual. And then it's sort of gone on to live action expressions. And now there's these waves of different familiarities that we inherit at this point where superhero stuff is as saturated as it's ever been.

It seems, The Tick talks a lot about destiny. This feels like a lot of synchronistic kind of elements paying into this renaissance. I think it's great. I think it's cool and quite interesting.

Last season ended with ... almost every show ends with a little bit of a cliffhanger like, "What could be next?" I believe it ends with, "They'll be watching you," something like that. So, my question is when that line gets thrown in at the end of season one, was there any thought to what that could mean in terms of season two? And how much is that just, "We gotta say something at the end to tease what could be"?

EDLUND: Right. Actually, the cliffhanger was a lot more conclusive and then we backed away from it because we wanted to not show our hand as much as we had. So, our plans were pretty defined in terms of the second season has a lot to do with AEGIS coming back to town and with the idea of Big Brother watching us or governmental surveillance. The fun one has with a human policing reaction to the superhero phenomenon, and that's kind of part of what we get to play with in the second season.

Forgetting the second season, was it similar to a network situation where you're going to the Amazon executives and pitching out what the idea would be? And how much is it they've seen what you've done and they just trust you? In terms of getting the green light.

EDLUND: I think that a lot of that was really based on just the reaction that sort of occurred worldwide to The Tick and also Amazon sort of, we've always just had I think a really strong kind of relationship there. And my impression is they have an investment in the future of it, so I would guess basically we got a green light and we had already sort of ... I've talked to Amazon about a long ranging plan, so they kind of understand where we're going in a lot of ways already as far as like a five year kind of plan has been the notion. We're on board with, kind of together with the idea of where we're going. This next season is just the next part of that journey.

The first season sort of touches on Tick's backstory. How much is his backstory playing into the second season and how much is that part of a five year plan?

EDLUND: This is the series that wants to play with that and those ideas in a much more aware and kind of active way. This version of The Tick as we kind of found in the first season is, he can learn a little bit. He's sort of learned some things from his course of action in the first season and has had evolution, learned small things, baby steps for him. But in the history of The Tick, it's the first time we've really kind of taken our story seriously and done our real building of the relationship between Tick and Arthur, but also the first time that The Tick has a kind of an arc and part of that arc, as we established in the first season, is "Who am I and where do I come from?" And we follow that up moving into the second season, with some ... to tease, with some really, really cool developments that you get if you watch the second season in full.

The first season of a show is often figuring out the way the show can be made, the infrastructure, how many effects can we do, all of that kind of stuff, and it's a learning curve as you're going. With the second season, you now know what can be accomplished and I'm curious how that impacted the writing process and what you thought about doing in the second season.

EDLUND: I think we discovered in the first season that we wanted to be a little bit more elegant and economical in what kind of ground we wanted to cover, so I think we found our comfortable place as far as like, yeah ... The second season, production is actually falling into a really nice rhythm. The crew's beautiful, our engineering in terms of our thoughts about how to integrate what sets we wanted to build and how we wanted to kind of flesh out the area of the world we wanted to chronicle the season. That's worked out beautifully, actually.

We're really building this sort of world of this kind of ... our version of our superhero homeland security place and that's been really, really fun. That's been like a production design and writing and kind of conceptualization that's a major undertaking. It's one of those things that can either kind of take off and really make your, it can kind of either sing or not, and I think we have that kind of singing, which is really great. It's fun.

I've seen some brochures on set for AEGIS and the-

EDLUND: The brochures are our best part.

The brochures are pretty great, and were you thinking about merchandising when all this was designed? 'Cause there's a whole bunch of merchandising that could be available for AEGIS.

EDLUND: Well, the AEGIS gift shop is like, they've got the biggest gifts. Like FBI does not gift shop like that, do they? Maybe they do. I don't know. Yeah, sure. I think that what I'm happy about is that in the previous live action, which I really enjoyed and it was a different thing, but we never really had the time to create the culture of the world, things like AEGIS or Brown Tingle Cola, or just small things that kind of exist in the world that sort of build out the world.

The second season we've done more of that. We've been able to bring in superheroes, because The Terror had a no superhero zone in the city and he's been vanquished, so ultimately we're starting to build up a bestiary and that's gonna be fun, 'cause then we'll get a bigger and bigger armada of interesting critters to show the audience.

I wanted to ask, Terror basically goes to jail.

EDLUND: He goes to Popsicle jail. He gets frozen.

How does that affect Lint? Is she one of the leading baddies in this season? Or is it one of these things where possibly everyone has to come together to fight off something else?

EDLUND: I'd say it's nice and unexpected. Even The Terror actually turned out last season to be more of a ... I mean, yes, he was a villain. He was very much a villain. But a lot of our characters are more just people trying to get by. And so Miss Lint, she's basically a career person, career woman trying to get by, and she keeps going with that. So, in the new season, she's trying to take the reigns of control and that sort of starts her off. I'd say that it's ... I'm trying to make this into a good soundbite. But it's like this season, it's less about one big bad and it's got a nice sort of, I think, exploratory, rhythmic investigation of the world.

Miss Lint, she makes trouble. And she also tries to get ahead and that turns into a lot of fun for our guys and fun for the audience. Miss Lint is a member of the family in a twisted way, so she'll come up against us, but ultimately this is a story that's kind of building a fun raft of characters that we just start to watch try to work out their crap. I think like last season was about Arthur and The Tick coming up against The Terror and it was very sort of binary in this relationship to a villain in a kind of classic hero's journey, build up the character, sort of against a single opposition kind of world. This one is more omnivorous. AEGIS comes bearing gifts and also laden with curses, and Miss Lint as always is trying to do evil and just steal as much as possible, but her intentions get twisted up and become sort of, turn into unexpected outcomes and we get to meet a lot of fun new heroes. I think we've got some really cool world expansion that people are gonna really be excited by.

Has Arthur embraced being a superhero at the beginning of season two? Because what happens at the end of season one I think solidifies them being like a crime stopping duo, if you will.

EDLUND: True enough. And in the beginning of the season, it is no real spoiler to say, yeah, he's on board. What I like is we have ... the first season was very important and really it gave us a lot of what we haven't had ever for this show, which is kind of a sense of real gravitas and some importance happening between the characters. It's still a half hour crazy superhero comedy, but for us quite a bit, the second season, it's actually like we ... This is sort of like the way The Tick and Arthur have always been. The Tick and Arthur get up, they go on patrol. They're up and running and Arthur's in it, and he wants to defend his city and he finds soon that a dream is made available to him that he couldn't have imagined would happen for him, but it turns out that when AEGIS returns, they decide they're going to reinstate the Flag Five Initiative.

The Flag Five Protocol, they were gonna start a new Flag Five and he, because he and The Tick and Arthur are really the homeland heroes right now, the hometown heroes, they have a shot of getting on it. So, that's really the dream that he thinks might possibly come true, and sort of draws them into the intrigues of the season.

Is Overkill still not killing?

EDLUND: That's how it is, man. He made a promise. He's a good, he follows the warrior's code. Very, very distressing for him. He starts jonesing right away. There's really nothing else but that for him, so that, too, that's very much on his mind as we come back to ...

And of course I would be remiss if I did not bring up Dangerboat interesting relationship with Arthur. How does that progress into the second season?

EDLUND: It progresses. I think it deepens and I think it matures, actually, is how we would say.

You mentioned you're bringing in other heroes. How large do you envision the world being with heroes? Is it one of these things where you imagine there's 1000 of them on the planet?

EDLUND: Right. I think it's somewhere in that DC/Marvel kind of world which is basically, I think if you asked them, they'd probably be a little evasive, but it would probably be in the thousands of meta humans, and then like say ... The notion of, "Oh, a meta human is one in a million" or something, that maybe puts a few hundred in the United States. How many of those have decided to kind of move into super villainy or superherodom? So, yeah. I think lots. But I think what's sort of been our corner of the world has been in this sort of superhero recession with The Terror in place. We're gonna learn more and more about them. We'll meet more and more of them as they sort of filter back in to what was sort of a dead spot.

The first season is very much Dot, Overkill, Arthur, Tick together, Dangerboat being a sort of sidekick if you will. Is that still the dynamic of season two? Or has there been a character or two that's entered their circle?

EDLUND: I mean, in the way of ... their circle is still pretty tight, the dynamic. I think Tin Foil Kevin is still in there. He dukes it out. We learn more about him and he joins, he stays kind of tight with the family over time. But really Dot and Overkill who developed, we felt, a kind of partnership and crime, and kind of an interesting relationship already, they continue that. Overkill is sort of like a semi feral cyborg who has been mostly eating his version of Spam and living on a talking boat, so he's kind of orbiting Dot and the Everests, and the whole idea of knowing people again when we sort of start this, and that's fun. All of our, the family is back. I'd say that meeting AEGIS is a big part of what happens, because they meet in AEGIS, in a sense, new mentors and new tormentors.

The first season ended with Walter... there is that mystery of what's going on with him. Is that touched on this season?

EDLUND: It is. It is. I'd say that one of the themes of the season sort of are secrets and lies, and Walter's got one. So, we investigate that and get to the bottom of that. Lots of other sort of bits and pieces, just the idea of deceit and what the truth is, kind of plays heavily into the season. It's a good time to learn more about Walter, which we do.

The first season was 12 episodes and this one is 10. Was that story based? Was that just Amazon said, "We want to do 10"?

EDLUND: I mean, it was Amazon I think coming back to what is their more standard format, and I think it's working quite well for us, actually, 'cause we're close to being done. Two more episodes would not sit well with me at this time. It actually suits the story that we developed. It feels right. The 12 episodes was part of the experiment to split both halves into a two part release, as we kind of ... Amazon and we are kind of, I think the plan is just to release it all at once. And that's something that we believe will make people happier, help us in terms of like awareness and just kind of be better in terms of the flow of watching. So, that's all of those factors kind of I think rolled up into why we're doing 10. I think everyone's happy about it, basically.

I really like shows that are eight or ten episodes. I think I speak for fandom, because you can absorb it.

EDLUND: It's very much the spirit of what we want to be, also, is like on the lighter end of binge watching.

Did you guys have a writer's room that continued after season one? Or it was a hiatus? How many of the scripts were done prior to filming the first episode?

EDLUND: Of this season?

Yes.

EDLUND: It was sort of a sliding scale of what was done. We had a lot of, we've been writing now like lunatics. There's been ... but the scripts were done. I mean, a lot of them, we had how many done? Four?

Before production started?

EDLUND: Yeah, six. We had six or seven done. Then what happened was production is a reality unto itself and we've learned a lot about what we ... We had to kind of recalibrate in order to make elegant certain storylines and make doable other storylines, so we've been in a place of very live process of writing for what's going down in front of the camera. It's been, in a lot of ways, here's the thing. We really want this to feel like, as it did in the previous season but hopefully better, like an integrated set of storylines that really flow and really are aware of where they've been and where they're going, and part of that is keeping all the jars open and keeping the story available to ... Instead of having it do kind of broad retrofitting, I mean, I came from broadcast where you would've already aired certain episodes by this point. So, you'd be publishing chapter of your novel before you were done, and then you'd say, "Well, we can't go back and revisit anything."

We've been in a really good place where for that, although it's extremely taxing and it's come down at this point to the pair of us for the moment, but it's like ... it's a place where the piece is I think quite holistic as a whole, because of it.

One of the advantages of filming everything before it airs is that, have you found that while filming episode eight, "Oh my god, if we had just done this in episode two, this joke would play off so much better" or ...

EDLUND: We're always doing that. But we've been actually, in this case I'd say when we're done with an episode, we actually, we've been in that process living through it. So, we tend to be kind of done when we're done and moving forward. But it is that. You're able to keep these things alive and mutable until a very latter moment and they can all lock together in what's hopefully a really engaging and kind of fairly tight viewing experience, 'cause that's I think the mark of these new things. What we're really making is, we thought last season too, like a movie. This is a movie experience, because that's the binge experience.

I have two last questions for you. The first is Arthur's suit. What new powers might we see this year and is the suit ever ... an ever growing list of things he can do, you know what I mean?

EDLUND: I don't ... the suit actually sort of stabilized. I think it will do more things. But it became, I think basically him being comfortable in the suit and him sort of knowing the basic range of his powers and then most of what we've examined in the season, which I think is probably the right thing, is the guy inside the suit and what motivated him, and what motivates him, and what makes his desire to be a hero, what gets in and out of his sort of trance as far as ego and a sense of what he is and what fills the suit, and whether or not that's something that should be considered heroic. We've left open, though, the door for more exploration as we move forward.

My last thing for you, you tease there's gonna be some new heroes this season.

EDLUND: I do.

What are some of the favorites that are coming in?

EDLUND: We've got this fellow who's retired. He saved the world twice. He's a retired elastic sort of hero named Flexon who is played by Steven Ogg and is really, he's hilarious. And we have our version of Doctor Strange, more or less, is played by Clé Bennett, is a character called Sage the Supernumerary, who is this sort of cosmic wizard superhero who is the heir to what's called the Blind Eye of Thirdara, which is just a supernumerary nipple prominently displayed on his chest by his uniform. Then, who else have we got that's fun? On the super villain side, there's a bank robbing fiend that we introduce with a team of Maine fisherman henchman who is revealed to be a giant lobster, like an anthropoid sort of lobster creature, anthropomorphic monstrous, as tall as The Tick, very powerful, named Lobstercules. Lobstercules has a whole part of the story that's really fun. We won't get deeply into it, but that creature has many surprises. Has six surprises.

The Tick season 2 drops on Amazon Prime Video April 5th.