A&E’s Psycho prequel Bates Motel has gotten weirder and wilder across its first couple of seasons. The show will soon be returning for Season 3, and as we can see from the first trailer for the new episodes, Norman Bates is beginning to come into his own as the killer and creeper we all know and love. Check out the show’s nod to its Psycho source material, below.
In the preview, there’s a beautiful, blonde young woman who comes to stay at the Bates Motel. She’s returning from a night on the town, and she takes off her tight dress and jewelry in the comfort of her hotel room. The angle of the shot is pretty strange, and soon we realize that she is being watched through a peephole in the wall. A teenaged Norman Bates is watching her from the other side of the wall, but he quickly replaces a picture frame over the hole before she catches on to his trickery. It’s a moment that is both reminiscent of the first portion of Psycho and fitting for a preview that is based on Alfred Hitchcock’s lasting masterpiece.
Norman Bates started out as a seemingly shy young man with a very complex relationship with his mother. They opened the Bates Motel during Season 1, and since then the show has slowly but surely opened the audience up to new facets of Norman Bates’ personality. During that time, we’ve also seen plenty of murders and abuse, as well as rape stories and other unhappy conclusions. I wouldn’t exactly call A&E’s highly touted series one that has a rosy outlook.
I do like that stare and little smirk that Norman gives at the end of the video. We’ve seen that knowing look on his face time and time again, most recently during the Season 2 finale, when he managed to pass a lie detector test related to a teacher that he had actually murdered. The kid’s a psychopath and I can’t wait to see how Bates Motel continues to share his progression as a killer.
Most of the cast is expected to return to the series (at least, if they’re not dead yet). Freddie Highmore and his smirk will definitely be back, as will Vera Farmiga and Max Thieriot. We already know that Norman will sink deeper into an inability to tell what is real and imagined, and as his inner relationship with his mother grows stronger, in real life, there are going to be problems.
Bates Motel is expected to return to the schedule in March of 2015. You can check out more midseason premiere dates, as well.
