Freeform’s Shadowhunters returns to the airwaves early next year with a pair of new showrunners at the helm. Expect the show — ostensibly about supernatural adventures, but actually about getting as many insanely good-looking young people into a single shot as possible — to be darker. But, uh, not thematically.
Image: Justin Stephens/Freeform via Entertainment Weekly
Nope. Todd Slavkin and Darren Swimmer (previously of Smallville) talked to Entertainment Weekly and explained, in a marvelously vague way, how they’re going to tinker with the show’s mise-en-scène in season two:
“There were a lot of cool things that perhaps could be cooler, visual-effect wise, the look of the show,” Slavkin tells EW. “We took the rooms and we darkened them.”
If you watched season one of the show, which is based on the Cassandra Clare Mortal Instruments YA fantasy books, you will recall that most of it took place at night (one of the major characters is a vampire, after all), and/or in shadowy environments (see: Title of show). Though they all have the abs for it, it’s not like the Shadowhunters were hanging out at the beach all the time. So it will be interesting to see what changes, exactly.
And since the showrunners aren’t completely superficial, they also shared this tidbit:
“We’re character guys,” Slavkin says. “We wrote Smallville for many years and the thrill of that for us was the character and the growth and the relationships between the people. If anything, in season 2, we’re leaning more into that. Of course there’s missions and of course there’s hunting, but the yearning, the longing, the triangles, the relationships is what really turns us on.”
Season one of Shadowhunters is currently available on Netflix.