Inside the Celebration that was the ‘Timeless’ San Diego Comic-Con Panel
Timeless came to San Diego Comic-Con not to tease Season 2 – nothing has been written yet – but to thank the fans for the fact that they’re even getting a Season 2.
That, and to display the enormous affection the cast has, for each other, and for the audience that has wholeheartedly embraced them.
For those of you who don’t remember, the show, on the bubble for most of the summer was initially canceled by NBC on May 10th, only to be un-cancelled three days later in an unprecedented decision that left both the show-runners and the cast shocked.
“I got a call from NBC and they said we made a mistake and we’re picking up the show,” Erick Kripke revealed, wearing the face of a man who could still not believe this was real life.
Before that, though, the panel started with a lovely video thanking the fans, which you can see here:
Present at the panel were Eric Kripke, Shawn Ryan, Matt Lanter, Abigail Spencer, Malcolm Barrett and Goran Visnjic, and they all started by how they received the news of the un-cancellation, with Abigail Spencer having the best story to tell, as she was asleep and “woke up to hundreds of emails and notifications.”
She, of course, thought it was a gag at first.
The cast went on to talk about their favorite adventure, with Matt and Abigail bantering about episode 9 – where they kissed – and having this amusing exchange:
Matt Lanter: That was the episode we kissed.
Abigail Spencer: I forgot about that.
Matt Lanter: No, you didn’t.
Malcolm Barrett then jumped in to say that the episode where the two of them kissed was his favorite adventure, because he’s not also the funniest, he’s also knows how to work the crowd.
Oh, and he’s not so secretly a Lyatt shipper.
(Aren’t we all?)
The showrunners also talked about the future – aka, whether they would ever consider traveling there instead of the past, and gave a firm ‘no’ that had a caveat: If they ever get to Supernatural numbers, in regards to seasons, they might have to try that out as they’ll be out of all other ideas.
One can hope, right?
Not that they planned Season 1 – or will go ahead with the planning in Season 2 with the mentality that this might be the end. “You play to win, you never design a season with like ‘maybe we’re not coming back,’ ” promised Kripke, for which he got a round of applause.
Those applause only got louder when he added: “You write your way to victory.”
Season 2 – which is set to start filming in November and will now film in Los Angeles thanks to a big tax credit, Shawn Ryan hinted that things are coming together and promised to “dig deeper into the characters,” which sounds more than fine by us, we fell in love with the characters, after all.
Personally, my favorite moment of the panel – and one of the highlights of San Diego Comic-Con in general — was when Kripke and Ryan were asked about diversity in the writers room and whether the show felt different because they’d strived for it only for them emphasize that they made it a point to “not hire people who looked like them,” because what new ideas would those people bring to the table.
On the same vein, the showrunners promised that Season 2 would try to focus on the big players in history that have been ignored, in a way, because of prejudices of race, gender, and class.
“Lots of doubling down on that in Season 2 and presenting this idea that history is for everybody and America is for everybody,” Kripke, promised, to yet another round of applause.
What can you do but applaud when you get this level of chemistry, this level of excitement for the product that you’ve been consuming and when you genuinely feel like a show appreciates what you, as a viewer, bring to the community that Malcolm Barrett has deemed clockblockers.
Not much. We’re proud clockblockers, after all.
Timeless returns to NBC in 2018.
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Lissete Lanuza Sáenz
Lawyer. Writer. Columnist. Geek. Falls in madly in love with fictional characters. Hates the color yellow, misogyny, and people who are late. Can always be found with a book. Watches an absurd amount of TV every week, often, while eating coffee ice cream. She has no regrets. You can check out her blog here: Absurday. Lissete is a senior writer for Tell-Tale TV. Follow @lizziethat