With Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. having proven Marvel's ability to thrive in broadcast, we cannot wait to see how much more insane things get for the impending Inhumans series set to debut this fall. Surprisingly little is known about the superhero team-up drama, and a trailer hasn't even been publicly released. But CinemaBlend's Laura Hurley spoke with Inhumans star and Lost vet Henry Ian Cusick, whose recent casting itself was mired in secrecy, and he clued us in on exactly who he'll be playing.
I play a geneticist and his name is Dr. Evan Declan and he's human. I think that says quite a lot already, if you know the comics, you know where the Inhumans are coming from, so that's pretty much my character.
Oh, hell yes. Granted, I would have been more than down with watching Henry Ian Cusick strapping on some snappy leather outfit in order to take on the day as a proper superhero. But we're not going to be greedy when it comes to great actors in badass TV shows. His initial casting news first hit IMDb before being confirmed to us by ABC, and it did offer up the name Dr. Evan Declan, but that was as far as the information went, and it wasn't even clear if that information was legit or not. Now we know it absolutely was.
And we know even more about Dr. Declan, a character who doesn't appear to be lifted directly from the comics, thanks to our talk with Henry Ian Cusick. Fans won't be needing to worry about what powers Declan has, since he'll be just like most of the rest of the planet when it comes to being a normal human being. Of course, he'll obviously be more intelligent than certain swaths of the population, but his occupation as a geneticist puts into question where Declan's loyalties will lie in the Inhumans universe.
Given the Royal Family of Inhumans -- as led by Anson Mount's largely silent leader Black Bolt -- came into existence due to genetic experiments performed on humans. In the comics, the genetics work was started by the Kree, but it's unclear if the TV show will follow in this direction, and it's plausible that Declan could have something to do with it. Because our protagonists have fled to Hawaii after a military coup goes down, it's likely that the group is being tracked and studied by experts in all fields, from the Department of Defense to...geneticists. So even if he isn't a creator figure, Henry Ian Cusick could easily be the big villain for the Inhumans, as Iwan Rheon's antagonistic Maximus likely won't be an overarching baddie for the series.
But who's to say Evan Declan won't be one of the good guys? Being a race of genetically modified beings on Earth does not make for easy acceptance, and it's more than possible that the Inhumans seek out the assistance of a virtuous geneticist in order to possibly find a way to "cure" or mask their non-human qualities, such as Medusa's magical hair. That does seem kind of ridiculous, admittedly, because how much gene-adpating does it take to make a 2,000-pound teleporting bulldog look like anything but a 2,000-pound teleporting bulldog?
While best known as an actor, Henry Ian Cusick is also getting his feet wet within the tech industry. And no, not for any gene-splicing lasers or anything, but rather with the new social media platform JamBios, which is nothing like Twitter's "let me get all my angst out at once" approach, and instead lets users lay out the best memories from their lives for other to share in celebrating. We're pretty sure Cusick will have his first foray into the Marvel TV Universe pop up on his JamBio in the future.
We could not be more pumped to see what Henry Ian Cusick and all the rest are bringing to the table for ABC's next big superhero drama. Marvel's Inhumans will make its big debut in IMAX on September 1 for its two-episode special event, and it'll then debut on ABC proper later in September, and it'll air on Friday nights this fall. To see everything else hitting the small screen in the near future, head to our summer TV premiere schedule.
This poll is no longer available.
