The New Penny Dreadful Trailer Is Cursed And Mysterious

When Penny Dreadful returns to Showtime for Season 2 next year, it will have quite a few narrative threads to expand upon. Now we have our first good look at what’s coming, and there are of course dark things stretching across the horizon.

Predictably cryptic in nature, the promo features Eva Green’s demonically enhanced Vanessa Ives talking about accepting two sides to her sixth sense for evil, saying that a curse can also be a blessing. She tells whoever is listening that he or she has to do the same with the gifts they have been given. It seems like she has to be talking to Josh Hartnett’s newly established Wolfman Ethan Chandler, as the two have developed a bond over all things supernaturally bewitching. But I’m pretty sure Ethan already has a good grasp of his powers and doesn’t require Vanessa’s help in self-justifying things.

It’s soon after she says this that Rory Kinner’s resurrected Caliban shows his put-upon wet head. Could Vanessa be showing him how to live a normal life while taking advantage of his murderous emotions? Caliban is definitely a guy who needs guidance, though I’m not sure Ms. Ives is the best teacher.

Then Victor Frankenstein (Harry Treadaway) is seen, which leads to the trailer’s most interesting moment: the hand rising from the pool of what I’ll assume is the grodiest water known to man. When Season 1 ended, Caliban had threatened Victor into creating a lover for him, and it looked very much like the consumption-ridden Brona Croft (Billie Piper) was going to be Victor’s fresh corpse of choice to help ease his woes. Are these a woman’s fingers?

We also get a shot of Sir Malcolm (Timothy Dalton) and Dorian Gray (Reeve Carney), the latter of whom is looking fondly at a picture of Vanessa, but it isn’t clear what either of these characters will be doing next year. Sir Malcolm essentially finished his Mina hunt, and Dorian really wasn’t given much of a storyline beyond “He’ll fuck anything.”

Season 2 will see a rising antagonistic arc from Madame Kali (Helen McCrory), the spiritualist who wasn’t too pleased with Vanessa’s possessed actions last season. Patti LuPone also signed on, and there’s always the chance for more characters to pop out of the literary woodwork. Plus, that bloody scorpion will hopefully be explained in more detail.

Currently finished production on half of its ten-episode Season 2, Penny Dreadful will return to Showtime at some point in 2015.