Are you ready for more gore, more fights, more fangs in season 2 of “From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series?” That’s kind of what star Wilmer Valderrama promises fans will get.
“Robert [Rodriguez] is such a genius,” Valderrama told me at San Diego Comic Con, speaking of the show’s creator. “The new season is bad ass.”
The 10-episode season debuts at 8 p.m. Aug. 25 on El Rey Network with a premiere that Rodriguez directed. While the show’s first season followed the story in Rodriguez’s 1996 film, Season 2 begins a fresh new chapter for the vampire crime drama.
El Rey, which Rodriguez founded, recently released character posters that offer hints about the new season. Paired with the official season 2 trailer and other new photos, we get an idea of what’s in store for the bank-robbing Gecko brothers, their former captives and the nasty culebras, the snake-like ancient creatures who drink human blood.
Valderrama’s Carlos Madrigal emerges from the Titty Twister strip club with a new plan and an unlikely ally in Scott Fuller (Brandon Soo Hoo), the son of former minister Jacob Fuller (Robert Patrick).
Richie Gecko (Zane Holtz) and Santánico Pandemonium (Eiza González) are doing their Bonnie & Clyde bank-robbing thing outside Houston.
Seth Gecko (D.J. Cotrona) and Kate Fuller (Madison Davenport), who (SPOILER!) killed her father in season 1, are getting by in Mexico.
Trooper Freddie Gonzalez (Jesse Garcia) has returned to the suburbs to protect his wife and daughter, although it appears he might be spending some time with The Regulator, a new character played by Danny Trejo. The ruthless Regulator is on a mission to kill the Gecko brothers.
Esai Morales, joining the cast as Lord Amancio Malvado, a vampire who is thousands of years old, earns his own poster as well. Once they are reunited, the gang will face off against “an even bigger threat,” El Rey says. I’m just guessing that will be Malvado.
Jake Busey returns to guest star as the self-proclaimed Sex Machine in the new season. Besides Trejo and Morales, other new cast members include Jeff Fahey as Uncle Eddie Cruickshank and Briana Evigan as Sonja Lam, an American working in Mexico as a tattoo artist and paper/passport forger. Demi Lovato will guest star.
Part of the thrill of seeing the first season of “From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series” was how it explained more deeply the Mesoamerican mythology behind the culebra creatures that Rodriguez introduced in his movie. The director has said that will continue in the new season.
“I’m excited for fans to now experience this completely new story arc where they will learn more about the ‘Dusk’ universe and their favorite characters within this dark, dangerous, crime world with a supernatural edge,” he said in an El Rey release.
That culebra mythology is alive and slithering across the key art and posters in the form of Santánico’s two-headed snake, which El Rey VP and Creative Director Kurt Volk says “is the perfect symbol for the divide between the Gecko brothers who have split up in the season—two heads of the same beast who, like it or not, are forever connected to one another.”
The posters were created by El Rey and Gravillis, Inc.
I’m hoping to have more about “From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series” closer to the Aug. 25 premiere. Visit El Rey Network’s YouTube page for Season 2 video interviews.
From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series Season 2 posters
