The Tomorrow People type TV Show genre Sci-fi

Last we left The Tomorrow People, we had just experienced the mother of all twists — literally! Stephen’s mother, Marla, used her telekinesis to stop bullets from killing Astrid and her dad. Suffice all of that to say that Marla is a Tomorrow Person! And a powerful one at that.

So how is this going to change, well, everything moving forward? We caught up with Sarah Clarke to talk about Marla’s future relationship with Stephen, her impressive powers, and the idea of fighting being a family affair (Luca included!):

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Now that Marla can’t pretend to be an unknowing mother in the background anymore, how does she change moving forward?

SARAH CLARKE: She’s sort of been in this hiding mode because of trying to protect her children and herself from what she saw was happening with her husband, so I think there’s been a level of denial for her to keep going and just hoping that Stephen’s breakout passes through to a point of him deciding, ‘Well I may have these powers, but I’m just going to sit on them.’ I think that was Marla’s whole M.O. for dealing with her own powers. Now that she has had to overcome her fear of using them to protect Astrid and her dad, she’s faced with the reality that she’s got to confront her son about her own behavior with him and herself. And I think it’s a relief for Marla to finally live in her truth and him living in his truth, and they can become closer because of it. Moving forward though, it’s going to be an interesting dance as to how she now decides how much she’s willing to embrace it and not just say, ‘Okay well this is something that you know and now I’m going to continue on the life I was leading.’ She can’t ever go back now to the life that she had so she has to reconcile that with herself.

But she is well aware of Ultra, right?

She is, but I think we saw in the last episode, it’s the first time she’d ever been there. She’d heard stories. She might’ve seen images from Roger, but I think as Roger got further and further entrenched in the work they were doing, I think Marla did not agree that it was something safe and that she wanted to expose to her children. I think that’s ultimately what drove her and Roger apart. She didn’t want her children being around that. Now, when Stephen started to breakout, she had to reconcile how she was going to deal with it and because she didn’t have a husband to go ‘He needs to know this.’ She could decide for herself, ‘Okay I’m going to do with Stephen what I did with myself.’ But now she’s got to change the rules for herself.

Are we going to get flashbacks or some sort of glimpse into her past and/or her life with Roger?

I think so. We’ve talked about it a lot. There’s a lot of really interesting material there. I think it’s important, but again, I don’t know because they only give us the script we’re working on. I always have a million questions. It is a very complicated reality. But yeah, I think certainly to give some understanding as to where Roger and she came from and how she herself broke out would be, I think, very interesting for the audience.

Will we see any new powers with Marla? Because from what we’ve seen of her, she’s incredibly powerful.

Incredibly powerful, right?! [Laughs] I hope so. I would only think they would have to. I think there’s definitely going to be some surprises as to what she’s capable of even for herself. That’s all I can say so far.

So does Jedekiah know about her?

That’s a really good question because I asked the same thing and no. He does not. I think it’s the thing that he truly doesn’t know and it’s something I’ve been keeping secret by myself for all these years, which is incredible. But people do, they are capable of keeping really big secrets. It takes its toll, but I think that’s why it will be such a relief for her and Stephen to be bonded this way.

My first thought after the reveal was: If Jedekiah doesn’t know and she’s so powerful, she’s now the secret weapon of The Tomorrow People. So what can you tease about how willing she might be to get involved and maybe help The Tomorrow People?

I don’t think Marla wants to go and become a Tomorrow Person. I think she really does want to show Stephen that there is a way to exist in the world, and even though you are incredibly powerful, you don’t have to go and engage in their war. That said, I think Marla’s also very naive as to what’s going on out there, so she sort of turned a blind eye because she felt like my first priority is my family and keeping them safe. So now I think she is going to be forced to decide how she’s going to live her life. It will be interesting to see how that all plays out.

And this all means that Stephen’s a synergist! So I would assume that he still has some untapped abilities.

I don’t want to speak about things I don’t truly know, but I will say this: I do think that as one grows and matures as a Tomorrow Person, their skills get honed and perfected, and certainly Roger and I would create someone that maybe is capable of something completely different that we don’t even know. I think it evolves like everything else. But yeah, there’s definitely room for surprises with what Stephen can do.

Is there any hope for poor Peter coming back?

Yeah, I think because he’s lovely, I think they have to bring him back! Robert Gant, he’s a treasure. I love him.

And are we still keeping things secret from Luca? How does this change things for Luca?

Well I don’t think I’m giving anything away in that it makes sense that he somehow must have powers too. It’s just a matter of when they come out, so I think Marla is very prepared now in what to do when he starts to show the signs.

So the Jamesons are going to become The Incredibles?

Maybe. I don’t know! [Laughs]

The Tomorrow People airs tonight at 9 p.m. on The CW.