The 4400 Lands Back on USA
After landing with a ratings splash as a limited-run series last July on USA Network, The 4400 hopes to make as spectacular an arrival when it returns for a second season with a two-hour opener on Sunday, June 5.
Picking up [six months] after the original episodes, The 4400 continues to follow the travails of 4,400 people either reported missing or presumed dead over the course of decades, who suddenly appeared in a ball of light on a lakeshore. They had not aged since they disappeared, but some came back with enhanced strength, precognition, healing abilities and other powers.
Last season's finale revealed that the 4,400 were taken and returned by people from the future as a means of saving the human race.
Along with the supernatural elements, the show also focuses on the more down-to-earth issues of returnees trying to reintegrate with families, rebuild lives ripped out of time and deal with public fears.
Joel Gretsch and Jacqueline McKenzie return as agents for National Threat Assessment Command, the government agency responsible for the abductees. Other returning cast members include Patrick Flueger, Mahershalalhashbaz Ali, Laura Allen, Chad Faust and Conchita Campbell. Samantha Ferris joins the cast as NTAC Director Nina Jarvis.
Also back is Billy Campbell, who joined midway through last season as millionaire real-estate mogul Jordan Collier, a returnee who has appointed himself as the public face of the those who were taken. As it turns out, his agenda is a little more complicated than that, and a lot more sinister.
"As of last season," Campbell says, "I was building compounds for them to live in. This season, I've gone a step further, and I've created an organization that is delightfully icky. So it's good fun. This is the most fun I've ever had playing a bad guy."