This September, IGN is spotlighting the best TV coming your way in the 2018-2019 season . Today we've got an exclusive behind-the-scenes photo from Black Lightning Season 2, along with a preview from star Cress Williams, who plays the titular hero (aka high school principal Jefferson Pierce). In the sophomore season, Jefferson will be faced with new threats as the town of Freeland must reckon with the ASA's abduction of its children, who have been experimented on and held in stasis pods, some for decades. Closer to home, Jefferson and his wife Lynn (Christine Adams) are still coming to terms with the fact that both their daughters, Anissa (Nafessa Williams) and Jennifer (China Anne McClain), have inherited Jefferson's metahuman gene and are manifesting powers, while Jefferson's nemesis, Tobias Whale (Marvin "Krondon" Jones III) is still at large and plotting his adversary's demise. Black Lightning Season 2 premieres October 9 on The CW.

In Season 1 of Black Lightning, Jefferson Pierce had to balance the demands of being a high school principal with the dangers of returning to a life of crime fighting as a middle-aged man and father of two headstrong daughters, Anissa and Jennifer. In Season 2, Cress Williams tells IGN, he's got a lot more to deal with, between the town's discovery that its missing children have been experimented on by the government, and the aftermath of an attack on Garfield High School by Khalil and Tobias that put all its students at risk.

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"We pick up right after the attack on Garfield, right after dealing with Procter and all these different things," Williams teases. "We quickly discover that Jefferson kind of wakes up and tries to go back to life and business as usual, but there’s all this collateral damage that won’t allow him to really go back to business as usual, so he’s gonna have to come to terms with that."He'll also have to grapple with the fact that Tobias is still on the loose, especially after Jefferson's single-minded focus on taking down the villain literally got him killed last season. "It’s still something that is on his plate, but as we start Season 2, other things have now piled on the plate as well," Williams reveals. "He’s having to be split, both professionally and privately, and then there’s also Tobias as well. The circumstances in Season 2 won’t allow him to be single-minded."Last season established Jefferson's Black Lightning and Anissa's Thunder as a pretty dynamic duo, but Williams says their partnership will experience some stormy weather in Season 2. Check out our exclusive behind-the-scenes photo of Black Lightning and Thunder from Season 2 below."What you’re gonna discover is that Anissa’s in her twenties and even though she lives at home, she is technically an adult - and I’m sure a lot of families can identify with this: this tough transition where a child is an adult and the parent is figuring out letting them be an adult but also not agreeing with what they’re doing, and those growing pains," Williams explains. "So that’s gonna get played out on our show with these super powers and with them being a team. Jefferson’s been doing this a lot of years and he’s got a lot of wisdom, but at the same time, Anissa is very, very different from him - at least the him that he is now - and so they’re really gonna butt heads in that regard."Meanwhile, Jennifer's own burgeoning powers will present other issues for the family. "That is gonna be a big journey, because Jennifer - unlike Jefferson and also unlike Anissa - has powers that she can’t really control and she’s not necessarily embracing them or wanting to have them," Williams says. "That ripple effect is gonna take us on a wild journey as a family and as individuals, and even right now, we’re in the middle of shooting episode 7 and it’s still something that’s carrying through and not resolved right away."In addition to trying to hold their family together as her daughters experience something she's already seen her husband go through, Lynn will also be taking responsibility for the metahuman pod kids that Jefferson and Anissa rescued last season, according to Williams: "The pod kids give a great opportunity for Lynn because she starts to spearhead trying to solve that issue, so it really sends her off into a very different direction; it really spreads out all of the main characters into some really great things."For Williams, the most exciting aspect of Black Lightning Season 2 can be summed up in one word: "Expansion. Now that we’ve introduced everybody to this world and to these characters, we start to expand, so we get to know more about Tobias and expand on him; Lynn as she starts to take on responsibilities for the pods, which expands her journey; and Jennifer, as we discover that she doesn’t know how to work these powers, it expands her storyline," he explains. "We even expand geographically; we’re gonna discover other parts of Freeland as well and realize that Freeland is bigger than we’ve shown thus far, and different parts of Freeland are like different communities. So now that we’ve established the world, we get to really go deeper and expand at the same time."Black Lightning Season 2 premieres Tuesday, October 9 at 9 p.m. on The CW.

Laura Prudom is the Executive TV Editor at IGN. You can talk to her on Twitter at @LauinLA