Warehouse 13 Post-Mortem: Death and the Next Big Bad
Spoiler Alert! Do not read this interview with Warehouse 13 executive producer Jack Kenny until you have watched last night's mid-season finale. Or deal with the spoilers and don't blame us.
Last night, Pete and Myka left us until next year — and in a state of shock — as Artie was finally freed from the evil grip of the astrolade he used to reset time last season. Too bad it was after he murdered a beloved W13 character and unleashed a possible worldwide plague.
TV Guide Magazine: What the hell are you doing to us?!
Jack Kenny: Oh, I know! [Laughs]
TV Guide Magazine: You seem to have triggered a global threat for the team with this Chinese Orchid situation.
Kenny: We kind of are. There is a bunch of stuff that we're setting up. We obviously have to deal — in a major way — with what Artie's been through and what happens to him, having killed Leena. How does he handle that? And there are many other versions of mortality that we're going to deal with in the next 10 episodes.
TV Guide Magazine: This is a pretty heavy turn of events.
Kenny: The arc of the series has always been Pete and Myka decide to take this job, find out if they like it, if they like each other, Claudia joins them, it becomes sort of a family, the family gets even tighter, they start to care for each other, and then are visited by various tragedies...ones that any family is visited by. Triumphs and tragedies. And now that they're really comfortable and really a unit — they have this new brother in Aaron Ashmore's Steve — they're facing issues of life and death.
TV Guide Magazine: But it doesn't look like they'll have much time to examine their life choices now that all of these other lives are in danger.
Kenny: Oh absolutely. We're not going to have long conversations about what the universe has in store for them. They still have their day-to-day "snag it, bag it, tag it" [cases]. There are still artifacts to gather and people in trouble. But amidst all of that, they have to deal with the loss of Leena, and with what the future holds.
TV Guide Magazine: What does the future hold?
Kenny: Well, we'll be introducing a couple of recurring characters in the next 10 episodes and then another big bad at the end of that.
TV Guide Magazine: So is this the end of Brent Spiner's Brother Adrian?
Kenny: It is the end of him for now. I don't know when Brent could come back — I would love to have him any time — and he'd obviously be a different Brother Adrian than the one we met this year. But no, the big bad we're introducing next year is not Brother Adrian. I'm sure I am not allowed to say who it is, but I think he will be just as exciting to fans as Brent was.
TV Guide Magazine: Why did you decide kill Genelle Williams' Leena?
Kenny: We needed to lose someone who meant something. It couldn't be a guest star, it had to be somebody who meant something to our team.
TV Guide Magazine: So she is dead dead?
Kenny: You know...yes. [Laughs]
TV Guide Magazine: Claudia had that great scene with Jinks where she explains how they've brought people back from the dead in the past. Is that not going to be the case with Leena?
Kenny: We may see Leena again, but not alive. If we brought back everyone who died, death starts to mean nothing. It would be impossible to raise the stakes.
TV Guide Magazine: With Pete's ability to feel vibes, I guess we're going to be seeing her on a more spiritual level?
Kenny: That is not a bad guess! [Laughs]
What did you think of last night's Warehouse 13 finale? Are you shocked that they killed off Leena?
