When AMC announced that it had renewed its critically acclaimed horror series The Terror for a second season, many were confused because the first was an adaptation of a specific novel by author Dan Simmons. Basically, if season one had covered the particulars of the book’s main story, then what was season two going to do? AMC answered these concerns by saying that the show was an anthology and that the new season would concern a new story in a different time period. Enter actor George Takei and World War II.
Specifically, the network revealed that The Terror‘s followup season, subtitled Infamy, would focus on the United States’ creation of Japanese internment camps during the Second World War. Takei, whose own family was sent to one of these camps during his childhood, will also serve as a consultant. In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, he offered some new details about what horrors Infamy would contain:
“There is the old Japanese literary form called Kaidan, ghost tales, that is fused onto this experience of Japanese-Americans. The people that were imprisoned were highly stressed, and some marriages broke up, some people went crazy, and they overlaid the story of yureis — spirits — and obake — ghosts that possess people.”
So, instead of dealing with terrifying arctic winter and the even more frightening mythical beast that plagued season one, The Terror: Infamy will pit Takei and the rest of the cast against two factions. On the one hand, there are the American soldiers who “knocked on [Takei’s family’s] door” and menaced many of the Japanese Americans they forced into internment. On the other hand, there are traditional Japanese spirits who are vengeful enough to possess a person. So, that sounds nice.
The Terror: Infamy premieres Monday, August 12th on AMC.
(Via Entertainment Weekly)
