Reaper returns tonight, after a nine-month hiatus (for us) and a month-long road trip (for the guys). What’s in store for Sam, Sock, Ben, Andi and the rest, and how do they fit into – or wiggle out of – the Devil’s plans? We went to Bret Harrison, the actor behind Sam, for scoop.
Warning: There are season 2 spoilers ahead. Don’t read if you don’t want to know!
First off, there’s tonight’s episode title: “Episode IV: A New Hope.” That’s not just for geek street cred (although we do appreciate that.) There’s a show-centric reason as well.
“Sam has new hope because he meets a guy, Alan, who has gotten out of his contract with the Devil,” Bret tells us. “The arc of the season overall is the driving factor of this Alan guy. Sam spends most of the season tracking him down and doing whatever he can to find out how Alan got out.”
Of course, Sam has other things on his mind, too. Last season, he learned that he was most likely the son of Satan. That means Sam faces danger from more than just escaped souls – he also has to dodge rebelling demons want to use Sam in their plans to overthrow the Devil. That makes things awkward for a certain set of lovebirds…
“Sam is on good terms with Andi, there’s a lot less back and forth, less hiding who he is and what he does, and Sam is excited to have that,” Bret says. “But Andi knows about my beinga bounty hunter for the devil, and she doesn’t know I’m the devil’s son. So that’s another secret – can I tell my girlfriend about this?”
Sam isn’t the only one having romantic entanglements this season. Bret promises that the show will spend more time on Sock and Ben this year, developing their characters and delving into their love lives. Sock, in particular, just can’t make things easy in any aspect of his life – he falls for his sexy new stepsister, which leads to all sorts of distractions.
Speaking of complicated family relationships, Sam’s life gets even weirder when his father – or “the man I knew as my father” – comes back. He was buried alive last season, but you can’t keep a good – or maybe very bad – man down. Of course, having faced death by dirt, he’s not going to emerge completely unscathed. “He’s kind of like Frankenstein’s monster — he hangs out in a freezer in the garage,” Bret says.
Another upcoming episode features a soul who went got sent to hell when a car hit him while he was lusting in his heart. Unfortunately, he’d never gotten around to lusting with the rest of his body, and the guys want to help him out. “The whole episode is about us trying to get Billy laid before he gets sent back to hell. It’s our 40-year-old-virgin episode, even though Billy isn’t 40 years old.,” Bret says. “That’s the kind of thing we’re doing. That’s the coolest sh*t I’ve ever seen on TV. I don’t know any other show that’s doing sh*t like this.”
