4400 Will Morph In June
Ira Steven Behr, executive producer of USA Network's The 4400, told SCI FI Wire that the upcoming fourth season will feature more of Jordan Collier (Billy Campbell), resolve last season's multiple cliffhangers and take the show in a completely new direction.
"We have Jordan Collier, Billy Campbell, for an entire season for the first time ever," Behr said in an interview at WonderCon in San Francisco over the weekend. "He's not going off sailing [Campbell took a year and a half last season to sail around the world]. So [we have] the chance, the opportunity, to really explore that character and let that character make big moves."
The show will also bring back Kyle Baldwin (Chad Faust), Behr said. "Last year he was in a total of two episodes, and we're going to do some interesting stuff with Kyle. Kyle is going to kind of switch his father figure from his dad [Joel Gretsch's Tom Baldwin] to Jordan Collier. He's going to take the place that Shawn [Patrick Flueger] had these last couple of seasons."
More important, Behr said, "the biggest change that we're going to make is that the show up 'til now has basically been about dealing with events that were started by the future, and what we were trying to avoid was a catastrophe in the future. Now that Jordan Collier has handed out the promycin, the future has changed. Whatever that catastrophe is [has] been averted. So now we're going to start dealing with what does it mean to have a ... world where promycin is there for the taking? Where everyone could develop an ability. And very early in the season, Jordan will become aware of a prophecy dating back a bunch of years ... that seems to involve him and seems to give an explanation to why he needed to hand out the promycin. And that's going to have huge effects on the present situation."
At the end of last season, Collier had passed out the drug that gives takers a 50-50 chance of developing superhuman abilities—or dying. "We left off knowing that Kyle Baldwin had taken a shot," Behr said. "We left off knowing that April Skouris [Natasha Gregson Wagner], Diana's [Jacqueline McKenzie] sister, was at least taking the vials of promycin. We left Shawn in a coma that had been induced by Isabelle [Megalyn Echikunwoke]. We had left Isabelle without any abilities and in custody. Richard [Mahershalalhashbaz Ali] was in the wind somewhere, with the 4400 Center closed, and Jordan Collier and Kevin Burkhoff [Jeffrey Combs] and Tess [Summer Glau] were off in the woods somewhere waiting to see the results of the gift they had given to the world."
Those cliffhangers will be resolved quickly, Behr said. "If we've learned anything from the last three seasons, the fans have different expectations, it seems, than they do for other genre shows," he said. He added: "They want answers. They want changes. They don't want to go a season waiting for the one switch. So we're trying in every episode to give some kind of major move." The 4400 returns with new episodes in June.