The awesome time travel adventures in 12 Monkeys resumes this Friday on Syfy as Season 3 kicks off! With the season finale airing... this Sunday?

Cole Feels Desperate

Aaron Stanford as James Cole in 12 Monkeys.

Cassie: A Scary Kind of Worship

Amanda Schull as Cassandra Railly in 12 Monkeys.

Jones: Mother/Daughter Issues

Barbara Sukowa as Katarina Jones in 12 Monkeys.

New Characters

New Eras

Aaron Stanford as James Cole and Amanda Schull as Cassandra Railly in 12 Monkeys.

About That Schedule...

Yes, it’s true, thanks to an unusual bit of scheduling that has the entire ten-episode season airing over three nights, beginning Friday, May 19th and wrapping up Sunday, May 21st. But lest you think this means 12 Monkeys is in trouble, the acclaimed show has actually already been renewed for its fourth and final season , which is in production now.On a recent visit to the Toronto set of 12 Monkeys – while the cast were filming Season 4 scenes they can’t discuss just yet – I spoke to stars Aaron Stanford (“James Cole”), Amanda Schull ("Dr. Cassandra 'Cassie' Railly") and Barbara Sukowa ("Katarina Jones"), along with the show’s executive producer/showrunner, Terry Matalas, about what to expect in Season 3, the new eras the characters are traveling to and that noteworthy airing tactic.Season 2 ended with a pregnant Cassie taken by the Army of the 12 Monkeys further into the future. When Season 3 begins, Cole has been unable to find her, and when it comes to his character’s mindset going into Season 3, Aaron Stanford noted, “He’s desperate. He’s unraveling. We started the story in Season 1 where Cole is a man with nothing left to lose. He’s only too happy to erase himself to do whatever good he can and atone for past sins. He sees no value in his own life. As the story progresses and he develops these relationships and falls in love and has an actual chance at a real life for the first time ever, it changes him. He begins to value life in general and his own life. At the end of Season 2, all of that is taken away from him in an instant and so that’s where we pick up in Season 3. He’s a man who is suddenly lost everything and is desperately trying to get it back. He’s on the hunt for Cassie and the hunt has been on for quite some time and they’re not having very much luck with it. The rest of the team has given up hope at this point and he’s tenaciously clinging to any little shred of hope he can find that he’ll still be able to find Cassie and bring her home.”As Cole has come to make stronger personal connections and become more emotionally invested in what is happening around him, it’s hard not to wonder if he could go too far to another extreme – to the point that he can’t do a job he needs to.Said Stanford, of this predicament, “That seems to be a question that is a recurring theme in this show that a lot of characters have to contend with. When things become personal, the stakes are raised quite a bit. They’re not just names and numbers of people and body counts. You can be very clinical or mathematical but when you’re dealing with someone you love or a child, suddenly everything changes. There’s that potential that you can be blinded by your own humanity.”Matalas agreed Cole’s dilemma is not one unique to his character, noting, “They’re all compromised on some level, about their relationships and the fate of the world. The show has always been ‘How much would you do to the world to save one person?’ or ‘How much would you do to one person to save the rest?’ It’s the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or vice versa, question. It continues as a theme for every one of our characters.”Cassie in the meantime has none of her allies with her, stuck in a scary world where her unborn baby is worshipped, yet seemingly meant for a dark future as The Witness. Schull explained, “We pick up a few months after, so she’s had some time to process it and live with these demons, basically - her internal [demons] as well as the external ones she’s coexisting with, these horrible people, the Army of the 12 Monkeys and their weird fascination with her as ‘The Vessel.’ Whether they’re keeping her alive just to bare this child, their god, or whether they’ll get rid of her afterward, she has no idea. She does know she doesn’t have a lot of options and she needs to take the first possible escape she can. That doesn't end too well and that’s when she slips into her darkest moment.”As to whether Cassie might be able to find any true allies in this time period, Scull remarked, “They worship and respect her physical being. They could not care less about her emotional or internal state, other than what’s happening in her womb. They want her to be as comfortable, well fed, and taken care of as possible only for the means of the Witness to be born as happy and well nourished as possible. They don’t care if she’s happy and well nourished. They just want the child to be happy and well nourished. She does have a couple of sympathetic ears, but everyone is so duplicitous. She doesn’t know who really has an ulterior motive and what they could be doing. She can’t trust anyone.”Said Matalas, of Cassie’s captors, “To them, she’s the Madonna. So she’s held in high regard. They also are not idiots. They know that she’s not under the Witness doctrine of this afterlife and what they promise. So she’s kind of under lock and key. And to take one step further, when the child is born, the teachings of the Witness and their god will not be left to her. So that requires us to dig into the society and who would raise that child.”Matalas noted, “Cassie will, this season, go to great lengths. Now that she is a mother, even though she doesn’t necessarily understand what that means, she definitely will start to feel that and that may put her at odds with everything.”Even while Cole and Cassie have come to change their viewpoints on some of the specifics of what they want to accomplish – and how they want to accomplish it – Jones has been fairly unwavering. As Sukowa put it, “Her mind is always that she still wants to reset time. She still has in her head one life for seven billion. That’s her main thing and she wants to defeat the Army of the 12 Monkeys.”Still, we have seen her get more emotionally tied to events occurring around her, particularly when she discovered her own daughter, Hannah (Brooke Williams), among Jennifer Goines' followers. But Sukowa cautioned that Jones and Hannah’s relationship was “Still strained. They don’t have a cuddly mother/daughter relationship. Because Hannah, she has moral values also. And Jones is able to set certain values and ideas and scruples aside for her mission. Hannah was raised by Jennifer with The Daughters, free, in the woods - Jennifer at the time being spiritual and mystical. Hannah has a great suspicion toward technology. They are not really on the same page. But Jones has softened, that’s for sure.”Season 3 will bring Jones into closer contact with Olivia (Alisen Down), which will have some notable fallout. Said Sukowa, “You will definitely learn more [about Jones]. There’s going to be more vulnerability. This season is a lot for her about trust. To lose trust, to feel betrayed, to be between two sides of people, to decide who to believe, they’re going to be very interesting scenes between her and Olivia that will reveal some sides of her that you haven’t seen.”Cassie’s storyline will introduce the character Magdalena, played by Hannah Waddingham – known to Game of Thrones fans as Septa Unella (“Shame! Shame!”). Matalas explained she was their first choice, remarking, “I remember watching Game of Thrones and watching what she does with her eyes - sometimes she doesn't have very much dialogue and when she does have dialogue she’s amazing. She looks nothing like Septa. She looks nothing like that and she’s really cool looking on her own. So in the writers room, Hannah Waddingham became the character for Magdalena. That was great.”Another new recurring character is one played by Battlestar Galactica's James Callis, and though no one will say who he’s playing, it’s suspected he’s the adult incarnation of Cole and Cassie’s child – The Witness himself. With Callis too, Matalas said, “He was the only one ever [considered] and we had very early discussions before we even shot a frame of it, of this particular time traveler. I told him ‘I’m writing this for you because you will get to know this person later on in the season.’ It was great. He was intrigued. He watched the whole show and became a fan. By the time he got here, we were gushing about Gaius Baltar and he was gushing about 12 Monkeys and it was a love fest and we had the best time. When you see what he does [in 12 Monkeys], Gaius Baltar won’t be on your mind. He truly takes this role to a really incredible place. He makes it his own. It’s really cool.”There will also be a guest appearance from Christopher Lloyd as the father of the Pallid Man (Tom Noonan), something particularly meaningful to Matalas, who is a huge fan of Back to the Future. Still, Matalas said that Lloyd’s casting, “Didn’t come out of ‘How do we get Christopher Lloyd on the show?’ It was ‘Who would we get to play Pallid Man’s father?’ You want someone who is tall and angular and has an incredible [presence]… We’re describing Christopher Lloyd. When we got to that, what I liked about it is if you’re going to put Christopher Lloyd back in time travel you want to do something that’s so not Doc Brown; that’s a completely different thing. I called him. He wanted to talk about it and watch the show. He’s a guy who is sort of at the birth of a cult in the 1950’s, who is going around to places that have had tragedies like coal mining disasters and fires and things, and preying upon people who emotionally need an afterlife. The ability and desire to see someone they were once with, this Red Forest idea, that’s the thing he’s selling. So he’s at the beginning of the Army of the 12 monkeys. When we shot it, he’s so charming and everything he says you want to lean into. It’s so perfect and so cool.”Oh, and one thing you’ll notice about Lloyd on 12 Monkeys? The lack of eyebrows, something the actor suggested himself. Matalas laughed, recalling that when Lloyd brought up the idea, “Me as a showrunner, I was like ‘I don’t know if that’s a good idea.” And then there was this other side of me like ‘An American icon is asking you to do something for a role that you created.' 'Absolutely, Christopher! Whatever you want to do. Shave whatever you want!’ So it was really cool. He was very particular about the wardrobe and to have that kind of caring from somebody I’ve spent my entire life watching and to collaborate is the best thing ever.”As a time travel show 12 Monkeys of course allows the cast to really mix things up in terms of costumes and setting. Asked to name a favorite era in Season 3, Schull replied, “ We get to go to the 1890s and that’s pretty amazing. We shot all of that in Prague. We went to Prague for almost a month. The costuming was incredible. The opportunities we had, the shooting locations were unreal. The material that came out of it is visually really impactful and exciting.”“Victorian England was amazing,” said Matalas, of a storyline that will also feature Rupert Graves (Sherlock). “Penny Dreadful for me is one of the best. How could I get them there? And when we do our own sort of version of that. It’s not quite as dark, but just the costumes, the music, everything about it… The horses, the carriage, the cobblestone. You feel like you’re in another place. And just seeing our people in those costumes. What does James Cole look like in Victorian England? We know Cassie is going to look beautiful. And then James just fits in there.”While Stanford also loved the 1890s, he noted, “The 1980s were great. I got to dress up like Marty McFly, which was a big hit on set. Everyone had a good laugh, because all of our looks in the 80s s were pretty ridiculous. That was a lot of fun. Then there’s the sequence when we’re walking across the lobby with all of us dressed in our 80s regalia. They were playing 80s music on set to get us in the mood. It was great. Each period has it’s own unique pleasures.”Asked how she felt about the three-day schedule 12 Monkeys is airing in for Season 3, Schull remarked, “I think people binge watch anyway. I think a lot of people who are fans of our show in particular, but also science fiction and fantasy, like to watch them all at one time. Every episode is so different from the last or the next. It’s not like you’re watching an insipid love story go from one episode to the next and it’s the same drivel and melodrama. It’s very unique."“I think it’s great,” said Stanford. “The way people consume content is rapidly changing. Personally, I think it’s changing for the better. I enjoy it more. That’s how I watch all of my shows. I like to be able to decide when I’m going to watch it and how many I’m going to watch at once and when I’m going to stop. I think people are really going to dig it. A lot of people are exclusively streaming now. There’s a lot of that with the younger generation. So I think it’s just us keeping up with the times.”As for how 12 Monkeys’ showrunner feels, Matalas said, “I love it. This was designed as one story with a beginning middle and end. And the structure of the three nights -- each one of those nights have a beginning, middle and end. They’re almost like seasons on their own in the amount of groundwork they lay. It’s absolutely perfect. I think for a time travel show... any serialized show is complex. How great to have all those little beats in your head before you go away for a week? Having said that, if you don’t like that, DVR and watch them every week for the next ten weeks!”

12 Monkeys: Season 3 begins its three-night event airing on Friday, May 19th on Syfy.Eric Goldman is Executive Editor of IGN TV. You can follow him on Twitter at @TheEricGoldman , IGN at ericgoldman-ign and Facebook at Facebook.com/TheEricGoldman