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Locke and Key on Netflix

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#1 ·
‘Locke & ‘Key’: ‘Scandal’ Alumna Darby Stanchfield To Star In Netflix Series

by Nellie Andreeva

January 30, 2019 5:25pm

EXCLUSIVE: In her follow-up series to Scandal, Darby Stanchfield is set to star as Nina Locke in Locke & Key, Netflix’s adaptation of Joe Hill’s comic, from Hill, Carlton Cuse and IDW Entertainment.

Locke & Key is a horror-fantasy series that revolves around siblings Kinsey, Tyler and Bode (Emilia Jones, Connor Jessup and Jackson Robert Scott) who, after the gruesome murder of their father, move to their ancestral home in Massachusetts only to find the house has magical keys that give them a vast array of powers and abilities. Little do they know, a devious demon also wants the keys, and will stop at nothing to attain them.


After the traumatic home attack, Nina Locke moves her family across the country to Keyhouse for a fresh start — and also to solve the mystery surrounding her late husband Rendell’s murder. She struggles with her new role as a single mom, as Rendell was always more the traditional parent type. She’s much more comfortable as an artist and house renovator.

The role was previously played by Miranda Otto in the 2011 Fox pilot and by Frances O’Connor in the Hulu pilot, which was a precursor to the Netflix series.


The Netflix series was created by Hill and developed by Cuse, Aron Eli Coleite and Meredith Averill; the new first episode is written by Hill and Coleite; Cuse and Averill will serve as showrunners.
For seven seasons, Stanchfield played Abby Whelan on ABC’s Scandal as the character evolved from a feisty, intelligent DC investigator to Chief of Staff of the White House.

Stanchfield’s recent film credits include the upcoming Stargirl for Disney+ and Justine from writer-director Stephanie Turner. She is repped by Gersh, Principal Entertainment LA and attorney Jason Hendler at Hansen, Jacobson, Teller.


https://deadline.com/2019/01/locke-...cast-nina-locke-in-netflix-series-1202546148/
 
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#11 · (Edited)
I got sidetracked with other things but finally finished the season last night. I have to say, I enjoyed it quite a bit overall. The back half of the season is stronger than the first half. The story gets pretty interesting towards the end.

The HDR image quality is also really nice on this one. It's not overly showy, but has lots of naturalistic dynamic range. There's an episode near the end that (incredibly vague minor spoiler) involves a power outage and the young kid running through the dark house with a light-up toy lightsaber that looks really great.
 
#14 ·
From the HOTP thread:


Netflix's 'Locke & Key' has the potential to be the next great supernatural show
By Kelly Lawler, USA Today - Feb. 7, 2020

Has Netflix found the "Key" to recreating the "Stranger Things" phenomenon? Not quite, but the streaming service has come close.

In new supernatural series "Locke & Key," Netflix nearly rips itself off in an attempt to find a new hit (although the comics "Key" is based on arrived long before "Stranger"). A story of three kids, a creepy old house, magic keys and a demonic but beautiful woman out to cause them harm, "Locke" (now streaming, ★★★ out of four) is both familiar and new.

Like "Stranger," "Locke" oozes with horror ambience and takes its cues from famous tales of the supernatural. It stars precocious kids, is set in a small town full of secrets and portrays adult characters as clueless or conniving. "Locke" is a mix of fairy tale and haunted-house tropes, fascinating magical mythology and teen drama, and while all are successful at some point during the 10-episode first season, they rarely are simultaneously).

"Locke" is nearly as strong a debut as "Stranger Things" was in 2016, but it needs a few tweaks to jump the hurdle between good and great.

Based on popular comic books by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodríguez, the series follows the Locke family – mom Nina (Darby Stanchfield, "Scandal"); teens Tyler (Connor Jessup, "American Crime") and Kinsey (Emilia Jones); and elementary schooler Bode (Jackson Robert Scott) – all reeling from the murder of their father Rendell (played by Bill Heck in flashbacks).

They move from Seattle to the cutesy New England town of Matheson, taking up residence in Rendell's gothic ancestral home, known around town as "Key House" (get it?), where the kids discover a series of magical keys. One lets you unlock doors to anywhere in the world; one lets you travel inside a physical manifestation of your own mind; and another turns you into a free-flying ghost.

Dodge (Laysla De Oliveira) an ethereal and magical woman with nefarious intent, also pursues the keys and isn't worried if she harms the kids along the way. In the midst of their discovery, Kinsey and Tyler try to adapt to their new school, make friends and flirt with potential boyfriends and girlfriends.

"Locke' succeeds with almost all the magical and fantastical elements: The mythology behind the keys is a refreshing take on fantasy storytelling, and each new key is as exciting for viewers as it is for the kids. The trip from comic book to screen leaves a few mildly irksome plot holes – How many keys are there? Where did they come from? Are their powers limited? – that (I hope) will get satisfying explanations if the series survives for multiple seasons.

The biggest weaknesses of "Locke" are the supporting characters beyond Tyler, Kinsey, Bode and Dodge. The other teens – a mishmash of stereotypes including the mean girl, the nerdy guy and the smart brunette – rarely feel multidimensional. When their roles expand later in the season, they feel out of place.

Nina has a weak storyline, a function of the series' mythology in which adults can't remember their experiences with magic. She is around too often to be a "Charlie Brown"-style, unimportant adult, but she isn't given enough screen time to make her feel essential.

In contrast to some overly padded streaming series, "Locke" could benefit from some breathing room. Much of the dialogue is obvious and explicative; young Bode sometimes sounds like a middle-aged professor. Writers struggle to incorporate adolescent drama with fantasy. Sure, having crushes on two boys isn't as inherently exciting as a key that can control someone's mind, but plenty of great series – "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Supernatural," "Roswell" – have balanced the mystical with the mundane, to far greater effect.

However, it is easy to overlook the series' flaws when its action and thrills really get going. It's twisty in a way that doesn't feel gimmicky, and finds a strong visual aesthetic for its magic. As the episodes progress, the writing becomes more confident, and the season ends strongly.

"Locke & Key" is the TV-show equivalent of a fixer-upper with good bones. The structure and the foundation are there, but some cosmetic updates might help.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/enter...es/4658603002/
 
#16 ·
Watched the first episode last night. I couldn’t place the kid playing the older Locke brother. Was driving me nuts. Then it hit me. The kid from Falling Skies! Remember that show? I liked it and look forward to putting a couple more down this weekend.
 
#17 ·
Watched the first three...so far, this is a much more well-rounded show from October Faction and I see why they released October Faction ahead of this...

Interested to see where it goes - worried that 10 episodes is a few too many but lets see what happens - it, sort of, reminds of me of Haunting of Hill House (for obvious reasons)
 
#18 ·
Five episodes in and this is WAYYYYY better than I thought it would be. Very interesting. When first you see the picture and synopsis that they stick keys in someone's neck, I was like uhm, this is going to be stupid or a kid show. So much more than that and so well done. Can't believe how engrossed the wife was too, she loved it. Excellent series and very well done, can't wait to finish this season.
 
#21 ·
‘Locke and Key’ Creator Joe Hill Didn’t Want Anyone to Know His Dad is Stephen King

Netflix's Locke and Key was created by Joe Hill, who also wrote the graphic novels of the same name.

Hill is also a very successful horror novelist.

You may have heard of his father, too: Stephen King.

When watching Netflix's newest addictive adventure series, Locke and Key, there's one name that you'll notice more than others in the credits: Joe Hill. Hill is the show's creator and executive producer, but is also the writer of the comic series on which the show is based (which has since been compiled into six graphic novel volumes). If he seems like a natural horror storyteller, well, it might just be in his blood—his dad is Stephen King, after all.

Outside of Locke and Key, though, Hill is also an extremely accomplished writer, having written acclaimed novels, short story collections, and comics since his breakthrough in the mid-2000s, and he achieved it all without the assistance of anyone knowing who his super-famous father is.

Joe Hill is, indeed, the son of horror legend Stephen King.

At the start of his writing career, in 1997, Hill decided to use the pen name 'Joe Hill' (his birth name is Joseph Hillstrom King) in an attempt to build a career under his own merits and achievements, rather than be compared with his father, who wrote Carrie, The Shining, It, and countless other classics. By 2007, Hill publicly confirmed that he was, indeed, King's son; there had already been significant online and industry speculation at that point, and his identity had been outed by a Variety blurb a year earlier.

“I lacked a lot of self-confidence as a teenager,” Hill told The Telegraph in 2016. “When I went into writing, I had to know that if someone bought one of my stories they’d bought it for the right reasons–that it is a good story–and not because of who my dad is.”

According to the same story, he got his book publishing deals entirely without the association of his father. This included the publication of 20+ short stories, and his first novel, Heart Shaped Box.

“I once had a friend who said it would be a grave mistake to go into writing as I would never be able to escape my dad’s shadow.” Hill said in the same Telegraph piece. “I’ve always been glad I never listened.”

He's written four novels and four short story collections in addition to Locke & Key.

While much of Hill's work has come in the form of graphic novels and comics—Locke & Key was originally a six-part graphic novel series that ran between 2008 and 2013—he's also been a fairly prolific writer of both his own original novels and short story collections.

His first novel, Heart Shaped Box was released in 2007, and won him the Bram Stoker Award for best first novel. In subsequent years, he released Horns (2010), NOS4A2 (2013), and The Fireman (2013). He's also released four short story collections: 20th Century Ghosts (2005), A Little Silver Book of Sharp Shiny Slivers (2017), Strange Weather (2017), and Full Throttle (2019).
Hill has his own DC Comics line, called Hill House Comics

While Hill has leaned toward novels and short stories in recent years, he's said that his favorite form remains comic writing. In late 2019, he started running a line of horror comics for DC, which started with five series, two of which (Basketful of Heads and Plunge) are written by him.

He explained to EW last summer:
“I’ve always been a comic book writer first. When I started writing comics, I felt almost instantly that I had discovered my element. It was the version of writing I liked best. I felt, when I worked in comics, that my strengths were amplified, and the stuff I struggled with as a writer almost completely vanished. Working on Locke & Key was one of the most satisfying creative experiences of my life. But it’s tremendously exciting to get back into it: scripting again, working with artists, working with other writers. Working in comics is the closest you can get as a storyteller to feeling like what it must be like to be in the Rolling Stones.”

His work has been adapted before.

While Locke and Key has had a long road to finally actually being released (it was previously a pilot at FOX and Hulu before landing at Netflix), Hill's work has been adapted a few times before. NOS4A2 is currently a series on AMC, entering its second season, starring Zachary Quinto. Horns was adapted into a film starring Daniel Racliffe in 2013, and his novella In The Tall Grass was adapted into a Netflix original film (starring Patrick Wilson) last year.

The King family is full of writers.

Even aside from Dad, Hill isn't the only writer in the family. He has a brother, Owen, who is also a horror writer (he wrote Sleeping Beauty with Stephen), and their mother, Tabitha, has also written eight novels and six short stories of her own.

His father dedicated It and The Shining to him.

While It was dedicated to all three King children (Owen and Naomi, along with Joe), The Shining was just for Joe. "For Joe Hill King, who shines on," the opening page from Stephen King reads.
He makes a cameo in Netflix's Locke and Key.

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/locke-key-creator-joe-hill-170000773.html
 
#22 · (Edited)
‘Locke and Key’ Creator Joe Hill Didn’t Want Anyone to Know His Dad is Stephen King
Bwaaa-haaa-haaa. It really doesn't help that he looks exactly like his dad. Good luck keeping that secret.



 

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#25 ·
Spoilers ahead - venture at your own risk


Locke & Key comic creators discuss the changes from book to screen

'Locke & Key' comic writer Joe Hill and artist Gabriel Rodriguez tell EW their thoughts on the new Netflix adaptation

This weekend, season 1 of Locke & Key premiered exclusively on Netflix. But the story of the Locke family and their house full of magical keys did not begin life as a TV show; a few years ago, it was still just a comic series by writer Joe Hill and artist Gabriel Rodriguez. Originally published in six volumes from 2008-2013, Locke & Key was a magically engaging comic series that invoked classic fantasy stories like Sandman and The Chronicles of Narnia while still coming up with fresh ideas. It has often made a great recommendation for people interested in comics.

The TV show version of Locke & Key very much represents the characters and themes of the comic series, but also changes up some details in the adaptation process. EW caught up with Hill and Rodriguez to discuss the show, its relation to the comic, and the origins of Keyhouse.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Tell me about your reaction when you sat down for the first time and watched these finished episodes. What was that like?
GABRIEL RODRIGUEZ: It was an incredibly interesting experience. Even knowing the story back and forth, [co-showrunners] Carlton [Cuse] and Meredith [Averill] took it from a new point of view and were able to surprise me in the way in which they handled the story and the characters, while at the same time being very faithful to the spirit of the source. The fact that I never distrusted what I was watching, considering that I could be their toughest viewer, was incredibly surprising and a fun experience.

JOE HILL: I think Carlton and Meredith nailed it. I love the show, and think it’s a tremendously exciting and addictive watch. What really jumps out at me is the tremendous sense of fun it has. It kind of fizzes.

RODRIGUEZ: There’s nothing of nostalgia in this show anywhere. I think that’s a very complicated thing to achieve. It’s fun to watch this story through the eyes of other creators who found a way to tell their vision and make something that’s not a translation of the comic, but making something new out of it. That’s incredibly exciting.

In my conversations with Carlton, he specifically referenced Gabriel’s two-page spread of the inside of Bode’s head from the first time the Head Key is used in the comic. It’s an incredible cornucopia of cartoons. In the show, the Head Key is depicted much differently. Whether it was the Head Key or the Crown of Shadows, what do you think about the way they altered various story elements for the show?

HILL: [That Head Key spread] is probably the most iconic image in the comic. I’ll say this: For years I have really wanted to see the shadow creatures come to life. I don’t think it’s a big spoiler to say we get to see them leap off the walls in season 1 of Locke & Key. It’s even better than I hoped it would be. It’s every child’s nightmare springing to life. When we see those shadow creatures come crawling off the walls, that’s really satisfying dark fantasy stuff.

RODRIGUEZ: In the show, they understood that what they had to be faithful to was the idea behind the keys, not the mechanics of how they work. In the comic, we were able to do certain things with the way we draw the magic, and the show needed to be different. The way you portray how the Head Key works in the comic, in which you can pop off the heads of the characters and go in, when you draw that, everything is blended by the way the line and color works so it all fits together. If you wanted to translate the same thing on screen it would have demanded an intense combination of props and CGI. It’s highly likely it wouldn’t have worked with that seamless blend the way it works in the comic. The way they took that idea and changed it into a landscape you walk into conveys the same purpose of the idea behind the key but in a way that works so well on camera.

As a fan, I’ve been following the development of the show for years. What was that process like for you guys?
HILL: I think it’s interesting that people think that’s so unusual. When I have an idea for a story, I may fool with it for a few months or a few years. My second novel, Horns, that was my third attempt to explore an idea I had tried to explore in two other novels. I had been playing with those concepts for nearly a decade. I think Carlton and Meredith found their way to the best possible version of the story. That 10-year progression from the first attempts to develop the show back in 2010, coming from the world of publishing, that doesn’t seem that unusual to me. It can take time to get something right.

RODRIGUEZ: Sometimes it’s just that the idea that needs the right moment to happen. This was not one single project that took 10 years to happen, it was multiple different attempts to adapt. In a way, it was like when they first tried to make Lord of the Rings. The first time was George Lucas trying to make it, and that evolved into Star Wars. Then John Boorman tried to do it and that evolved into Excalibur. They had to wait for Peter Jackson and Weta to take Lord of the Rings to the screen. We were lucky in that each of the production teams that tried to make a show out of Locke & Key was incredibly good and talented. Any time it failed, it wasn’t for a reason related to the quality of the pilot, it was all circumstantial things that happened in the middle ground. It was great that when it finally happened, it was in the best possible conditions.

HILL: I think the takeaway is we’re basically like Lord of the Rings, only better.

Back at the beginning of Locke & Key, when it was first starting as your comic, what ideas and influences were in your heads?

HILL: I’ve always loved stories of portal magic. Like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: The idea of turning a key and opening a door and stepping out of your world. I actually think books themselves are like magic cupboards, containing a whole tiny little universe for you to fall into. When I was first carrying the pitch around, that’s basically what I wanted to do: A story where the house would be kind of a character, and there would be all these keys that would let me play with all kinds of portal magic. We looked at different artists and some of them were good at drawing, like, intestines. There’s a place for that in some visceral horror fiction, but what I liked about Gabe’s characters was their luminous eyes and expressive faces. You could see what they were feeling in their body language and how they related to each other. Good stories of fantasy and dark wonder work well when you’re invested in the characters, so that when they’re in trouble you care about them. I wanted to work with Gabe because I thought his art was vivid and compassionate. And then once we started going, it was no longer just this story I had come up with, it was our story. I learned as much about the characters from the way Gabe drew them as he ever learned from anything I wrote. We sort of wound up like this old married couple. I’m working on a new Locke & Key story now, and when we were talking about Gabe said, what if we did this? And I was like ‘oh my god, that’s going right in.’ We trade a lot of ideas back and forth. It’s definitely our story.

RODRIGUEZ: Thinking about back then, I had already been working with IDW for a few years adapting books and movies into comic form. I wanted to do a creator-owned project in the vein of the stories that got me back into comics, which were the books Vertigo was publishing under Karen Berger: Sandman, Swamp Thing. I remember when they sent me the pitch. I was reading it in a bus on my way home and wasn’t able to believe how this was exactly the kind of story I wanted to do, but even better. The way Joe was handling magic combined with human drama immediately caught my attention. I thought this would be incredibly fun to develop in both graphic and storytelling terms. Incredibly weird vibing, It had the things I liked from Vertigo comics of the ’90s combined with Hayao Miyazaki movies. I knew we would have room to try something totally different from what was being published at that time in the comics industry. It was also an important personal journey for me in the way in which I shaped my adult life. I was able to make these amazing friendships with Joe and Chris Ryall our editor. It became an incredible experience. The passion and energy in the comics themselves is a reflection of that.

HILL: When I got married, Gabe designed my wedding ring. You look at the beauty of the keys, and I thought, ‘I want that on my finger for the rest of my life.’ There’s a group of people: me, Gabe, Chris, Jay Fotos who did the colors, Robbie Robbins who did letters. We became a kind of family. This family has expanded into people on the show, because Meredith and Carlton really get it.

When Gabe and I introduced a magic key in the comic, it was because we wanted to explore something about growing up. Each key has a magical power behind it, but they all explore something teenagers or people going through grief really experience. Using the Head Key, Kinsey removes her fear from her head, which happens both in the comic and the TV show. When we did that in the story, I thought to myself, a lot of teens go through a fearless streak, where they do things that in retrospect seem incredibly reckless and dangerous. Why would they do that? Because they feel they’re immortal, they can’t be broken, and they want to show the people they love that they’re ready to jump with both feet into life. I think guys, young men especially, want to be seen as unbreakable, unreachable, strong. So we used the Hercules Key as a way to show Tyler shedding his humanity to become this masculine loci of force. The Crown of Shadows is about the childhood fear of darkness under your bed, that it will become animate and come for you. Meredith and Carlton completely clicked to that.

RODRIGUEZ: Another thing I think the show captures as well as we intended in the comic is this idea that even though these magic keys seem like the answer to problems, they are a shortcut without facing them, and that always has a consequence. The idea that by growing up you lose touch with magic, it’s because as an adult you shouldn’t be able to rely on magic shortcuts through the problems in your life. You need to face them and sometimes acknowledge you can’t solve them.

HILL: Gabe’s putting a positive spin on it. I think the reason grown-ups can’t see magic is because as you get older, there’s a tendency to trade imagination for resignation.
RODRIGUEZ: That’s the whole point, that you can have these different readings. Locke & Key was able to reach a diverse readership, which is unusual in comics. One of the most rewarding things was how many people have approached us to tell us this was the first comic they ever read. Having the chance to make this story a kind of gateway to this art form has been really rewarding and exciting.

HILL: It’s a gateway drug! You start with Locke & Key and think you’re okay, you think you just have a casual habit. And then you’re selling valuables to buy back issues of Saga, and you know you’ve messed up and there’s no going back.

There’s always some changes in adaptation. Sam Lesser (Thomas Mitchell Barnet) has less of a presence on the show than in the comic, and the gender-changing key and race-changing key got mixed into the Identity Key. What do you think about those changes?

HILL: It has to work as a TV show. It has to succeed in the possibilities and limitations of its own particular form. When we worked on the comic, we were always eager to make it successful as a comic, and there were things we could do that you couldn’t do in any other form. I always think about the issue we did that was a Calvin & Hobbes tribute. Or we did another issue where these two giants battle. But TV screens don’t change size, so you couldn’t achieve the same effect as going from small panels to full-page spreads. We made a comic that worked and thrived as a comic. It was the job of Carlton, Meredith, the cast, and the production team to make something that would succeed on its own terms as a TV show. My argument that they succeeded is it is basically like TV crack, it’s hard to stop watching once you’re into it.

There is one thing which I’ve been thinking about a lot over the last week about how it changed. The comic is a horror comic in a lot of ways. The TV show is a work of dark fantasy that comments on horror. So there’s things like the Savini squad and their conversation about final girls. It’s not quite as meta as Scream or Cabin in the Woods, but I like that the show is in some ways more accessible as a work of dark fantasy, but the characters are also commenting on the tropes of fantasy and horror. That’s a really interesting choice, and a really satisfying one.

https://ew.com/tv/2020/02/10/locke-and-key-comic-creators-biggest-changes-book-to-screen/
 
#26 ·
I'm 3 episodes in and am enjoying it so far as is my wife which is a nice change of pace for us. We only enjoy a handful of shows together (Picard is on of them too!), so it's nice when we can watch side by side on the couch :)
 
#34 ·
Locke & Key showrunners Carlton Cuse and Meredith Averill explain that finale twist, answer burning questions


I will put the whole article in spoilers for those that have not finished the current season.


Warning: This article contains spoilers about the season 1 finale of Locke & Key.

Well, how about THAT twist, huh?


The new Netflix series Locke & Key is based on a comic book of the same name created by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez. Any viewers familiar with the source material may have noticed a significant difference in character dynamics on the show. While the demonic Dodge spent most of the original Locke & Key comic disguised as Zack Wells, a friend of the Locke children, the show’s version of Dodge only ever appeared in her female form in a villainous capacity…until the final episode, that is.


The last moments of Locke & Key season 1 revealed that Dodge had been hiding in plain sight the whole time…only here she took the name Gabe (Griffin Gluck) instead of Zack. If you look back at the tape, it checks out: Though Kinsey Locke (Emilia Jones) met Gabe through the horror-obsessed “Savini Squad,” Gabe wasn’t with the friend group when Kinsey first hung out with them. It wasn’t until after Dodge escaped the wellhouse using the Anywhere Key at the end of the first episode that Gabe appeared at the next Savini shoot — in a lobster costume, offering Kinsey “craft service” in the form of Cheez-Its. As Scot Cavendish (Petrice Jones) explained at the time, “Gabe’s new to Matheson too, so we offered him friendship in exchange for wearing a suit that doesn’t breathe.” Whoops!


After previously talking with Locke & Key co-showrunner Carlton Cuse about the making of the show, EW caught up with Cuse and co-showrunner Meredith Averill (The Haunting of Hill House) to discuss the finale’s revelations and what’s next for Keyhouse.


ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Dodge is Gabe! Dodge has not been thrown through the Black Door. Speaking of, how did you guys set up that reveal?
CARLTON CUSE: We wanted to have a big twist at the end. We loved the idea of Dodge having multiple identities like in the comic, but we felt like this version worked better for the TV series. Joe embraced it when we pitched it to him. For a variety of reasons it just felt like this was good. It’s also great in the sense that if you’re a fan of the comic you do get a surprise, it’s not like everything is laid out for you or happens just like it does in the book. Just to be specific: Gabe is always Dodge. Gabe is an identity created by Dodge. This is not something you missed, this is just something we’re clarifying. The Identity Key allows you to assume a new identity, but not the identity of an existing person. Every time Gabe exists in our story, it is as Dodge. Our little trip down memory lane at the end was a way to try and explicate that for the audience.





The Crown of Shadows is one of the craziest keys from the comic, and finally makes its debut in the finale. How did you guys approach adapting that key and all its living shadows, while also working in this elaborate body switch Dodge does with Ellie (Sherri Saum)?


MEREDITH AVERILL: We always knew that we wanted to build to a Crown of Shadows attack at the end of the season. It’s just such an epic, epic key. It makes for such an epic moment when Dodge comes up the driveway wearing the crown and the shadows come up from underneath and flip the car. We always knew we wanted that. But it was definitely one of the more challenging keys, especially from a visual effects standpoint, to pull off. Luckily we had an incredible director in Vincenzo Natali, who we collaborated with on this. He storyboarded this incredible sequence, which really helped us visualize it — the cast as well was helped by looking at the storyboards and knowing exactly what they were responding to. It was a lot of choreography. You watch it, and it came out amazing, but it was difficult even in the writers’ room to get the choreography down exactly like: Okay, where is the actual Dodge who is wearing the crown, versus where is Shadow Dodge created by the crown? She has a plan all perfectly laid out and it works exactly as she hoped. You see that brief moment of Bode and Tyler running up the stairs, and you see just for a split second of Dodge wearing the crown. What you see later is that what she went and did is, she had Ellie’s body just waiting outside the front door for her to drag it in at the perfect moment. It was a lot of tricky choreography, but I think we really pulled it off. We love the visual effects: When you actually get to see Dodge in her actual demonic form for the first time when she screams at Bode (Jackson Robert Scott), I’m so proud of our team for that.


It’s tricky because you want everyone to be clever. You want our heroes to think they’ve defeated her, but also Dodge outsmarted them. Our writers’ room knocked it out of the park.


Poor Ellie got thrown through the Black Door in Dodge’s place. Is there a possibility we will ever see her again?
CUSE: We don’t have season 2 picked up yet, but we are working on the writing. Let’s just say there is more to come on that whole story line. It’s not fully resolved. We don’t want to say too much without spoiling anything, but we’re definitely conscious of the reaction people will probably have to the end of the first season, and will want to know more about what happened there.



In addition to that twist ending, the finale also gives us that lovely scene of Nina Locke (Darby Stanchfield) and the kids around the table. What did you like about that as a resolution to Nina’s arc and the familial dynamic they’ve had over the season?

AVERILL: I love that scene, it’s one of my favorites over the season. Darby is so fantastic in it. It’s a beautiful scene because it’s a flip of when they first arrive, when she’s really wanting to put down roots here and make it a home, while they are so wanting to be anywhere else. Now you have her ready to move on because she thinks she’s made this horrible decision, only to learn that the kids, because of everything they’ve been through, have embraced the place and what it meant to their father. So much of the show is about adults and kids not communicating, so it feels like this is a scene where they’re actually talking and telling each other how they feel. You don’t get a ton of those scenes because everyone’s walking around with barriers up, but this is a scene where everyone’s so open. I thought it was a fantastic scene to end our family story on, and have them decide to really commit to their new life in Matheson.



How did you guys get that flesh sound for the keys that turn in a face rather than a door, like the Identity Key? It’s such a creepy, gruesome sound effect. What’s the story there?

CUSE: That’s our producer, Ra’uf Glasgow. I’ve worked with him since Lost. He was responsible for creating a lot of the iconic sounds in Lost. It’s just a special skill that he has, from flashback whooshes to the sound of vampires in The Strain, to the key sounds. Ra’uf spent a lot of time with sound designers on how to articulate fantasy in terms of sound. That’s something you don’t think about a lot. We think about fantasy in terms of visual imagery. But the sounds of fantasy are just as important. He’s responsible for coming up with those sounds like that. When Meredith and I heard them, we were super happy.


I really like the depiction of Rufus in the show. The writers and actor Coby Bird really captured what I loved about the character in the comic. What were you guys conscious of when translating him to the screen?

AVERILL: It was important to us to cast an actor with a mental disability. We asked our amazing casting director, April Webster, to go on a huge, huge search. We saw a lot of different actors, and as soon as we saw Coby’s audition (and his reel, he had done some guest roles on shows like The Good Doctor), we just felt he had so much warmth to him. He really had exactly what Rufus has on the page. We just believed in him and Bode’s friendship so much. Coby has autism, and we think it was really important to us to cast it that way. Coby did such an amazing job on the show. Similarly to your question about Ellie, we hope to tell stories with him in the future. It feels like his friendship with Bode is really special and important to the show. There are stories in the comics that we haven’t had a chance to tell featuring Rufus that we would love to tell in the future.


We’ve seen the Black Door, we’ve seen the Omega Key, so you guys were able to put a lot from the comics into the first season. But there’s still more left. Without spoiling, when you look at what stories are left to tell from the comics and what new possibilities there are from what the show has become, what excites you about looking to the future?

CUSE: The amazing thing about Joe and Gabriel’s comic is how much stuff there is in there. I think that was both the thing that excited both of us, and also was the heart of the challenge: How to tackle all these elements? There’s a murder mystery, there’s family drama, there’s teen drama, there’s fantasy, there’s horror. We had to figure out how to combine those things in a way that honored all of them and didn’t feel too disparate. The great thing about TV is when you start down a path it becomes an organic, living, breathing entity. We love so many of the relationships that have been created. So many possibilities arose from what we did in season 1 that we have a pretty good road map for season 2, so hopefully we get an official pick-up. Once we finish season 2, that will tell us about the longevity of the show overall. Right now it feels like, our goal is nothing less than making season 2 even better than season 1. I think that’s an achievable goal.


https://ew.com/tv/2020/02/13/netflix-locke-and-key-showrunners-finale-twist-burning-questions/
 
#35 · (Edited)
People knock Carlton Cuse, but since Lost he's done:
Bates Motel
The Strain
Colony
Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan
Locke & Key


And since Lost, the "genius" Damon Lindelof has done:
Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk
The Leftovers
Watchmen


I much prefer Cuse's TV work over Lindelof's stuff hands down! One I understand, the other I guess is over my head.
 
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