Get ready for ‘The Strain’ season 3 with our preview as we look ahead to the continuing battle as humanity faces off with the strigoi for the soul of New York…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
When we last left ‘The Strain’ at the end of season 2, Abraham Setrakian finally got his hands on the precious Occido Lumen after a season spent searching for the ancient text that he believes holds the key to destroying The Master and putting an end to the strigoi threat that’s currently ripping apart New York.
After capturing the book, Setrakian found himself face to face with ‘The Born’ aka Quinlan — an age old vampire hunter who will stop at nothing to kill his ‘father’, The Master. Quinlan has also assembled a group of human vampire hunters led by our old pal Gus, who is still dealing with the fallout from losing his mother after she was infected during last season.
Meanwhile, Palmer attempted to use a power play against The Master that ultimately cost him the chance to win the Occido Lumen but he paid dearly for it. The Master ended up killing Palmer’s lady love Coco to get his money man back in line while reminding him who was the real person with power in this relationship.
And finally, Eph attempted to get his son out of the city and away from a stalking mother who had been turned and was now coming after him. Unfortunately, Eph’s plan backfired when Kelly attacked the train they were on to escape New York and she not only kidnapped Zack, but she ended up killing Nora as well. Now Eph is left all alone without Nora and without his son as he tries to search for answers with the biological weapon he created that he hopes will soon wipe out the vampire threat once and for all.
With that said, let’s look ahead to ‘The Strain’ season 3…
HOW MUCH TIME HAS PASSED BETWEEN SEASONS?
According to the show runners behind ‘The Strain’, the series picks up with a very short amount of time after the season 2 finale when Eph lost Zack while Fet and Setrakian have just befriended Quinlan and his new army.
“Not a lot,” series co-creator Chuck Hogan said. “We’re opening up the timeline a little bit. It’s been fun watching the pieces sort of fall one by one, so we wanted to spread it out a little bit. I think we’ve a little interlude before we get into it.”
FEWER EPISODES
Most fans of the show have probably already realized that ‘The Strain’ is starting much later in the summer than the usual launch date and part of that has to do with FX making the schedule but there are also less episodes this season than the first two.
‘The Strain’ season 3 will go from 13 episodes down to 10, but according to show co-creator and executive producer Carlton Cuse that was always the plan so they could pack more action into a smaller window of time while also starting to move towards the end game for the series.
Cuse has said in the past that he doesn’t envision ‘The Strain’ going past five total seasons and this shorter episode order will allow them to really put a lot into this season rather than stretch things out for the sake of adding three more hours of television.
“I think the biggest thing about season 3 is that it is 10 episodes instead of 13 by our own design and we really wanted to increase the narrative velocity of the show and we felt by just doing 10 episodes we would really just make the show kick ass all the time,” Cuse said.
“It really feels like that’s the case. We’re past the point where we’re worried about are the strigoi real? Are people in denial? Is there a problem here? No, there’s a problem, it has to be solved and the fate of New York City is at stake and this season is kind of an all out battle for the soul of New York and the world at large beyond that.”
FET HAS SOME NEW FRIENDS
In a brief teaser clip shown from the season 3 debut of ‘The Strain’ during San Diego Comic Con 2016, Vasiliy Fet (Kevin Durand) is shown organizing an attack on the strigoi alongside a group of highly trained soldiers deployed to root out the vampires throughout the city.
Fet has now teamed up with Justin Feraldo, who is trying to clean up New York while doing so with very little help from the Federal government.
In the scene, Fet actually commands the group from the outside of the building over a headset, but Durand promises that his character won’t be on the sidelines very long and he’ll be swinging his rebar at the strigoi soon enough.
“He’s very much getting into the action again,” Durand said. “We get a chance to get a better idea of who this guy is and where he’s coming from.”
EPH HAS A NEW BOSS AND A LOT OF ALCOHOL
Following the loss of his son last season, Eph is still working to develop a perfect biological weapon to take out the strigoi but he’s also doing all his work while hitting the bottle quite regularly.
Feraldo has employed Eph to continue developing his chemical weapon but in the clip shown at Comic Con it appears that the strigoi are also adapting and evolving because the substance is working at far less than 100-percent effectiveness.
To compound Eph’s problems, he’s drinking a lot these days and also hanging out every night in the house that he once shared with Kelly and Zack in hopes that his family will one day return home. Eph is also driving around in a taxi cab these days, going back and forth from his family home to the compound he once shared with Setrakian, Fet and the rest of his vampire hunting crew.
There may be some romance on the horizon for Eph this season, however, after it was revealed that he gets rather close to Dutch after her multiple failed relationships a season ago between her ex-girlfriend and the situation with Fet.
“We see her form an unlikely alliance with Eph,” actress Ruta Gedmintas teased when speaking about her relationships this season.
What we know for sure is that Dutch won’t be with Fet at the beginning of the season for certain, but there’s always a chance they get those two lovebirds back together at some point.
“They need to explore things on their own a little bit,” show runner Carlton Cuse said. “I think we get them together at the start of the season it would be a little bit boring.”
That doesn’t mean Fet won’t be getting some romance time this season because it appears everybody’s favorite exterminator turned strigoi hunter will be locking lips with a lady or maybe two this season.
“Maybe,” Durand revealed. “We had a deal at the beginning, my wife and I, that every time that I have to make out with a woman on screen I have to buy her a bag. I had to buy her a couple more bags this season.”
THE ANCIENTS AND QUINLAN
Fan favorite character Quinlan was finally introduced into ‘The Strain’ during season 2 and the mysterious vampire hunter will get more of a back story in season 3. ‘The Strain’ has been famous for flashing back for certain characters to see what led to them being involved in this latest war and Quinlan will take center stage this season.
“Quinlan is a character that you’re going to learn a lot more about in season 3. We have some flashbacks that tell us more about his origin and kind of some of the events that shaped his life,” Cuse teased.
There will also be more information divulged on the Ancients — the all powerful vampire hierarchy who don’t want The Master to upset the natural order of things with humanity.
“The Ancients are very much a part of this,” Cuse said. “We dig a little bit deeper into how the Ancients relate to Quinlan and the Master and the Ancients get really involved in the whole plan to get rid of the Master. So they have a significant role this year.”
OCCIDO LUMEN
So much of last season of ‘The Straing’ was predicated on a race between Setrakian and the Master getting their hands on an ancient text known as the Occido Lumen.
Setrakian believed it held the key to eliminating the Master and getting rid of the strigoi threat once and for all. Whether or not it held that valuable information is unknown, but the Master was willing to pay a lot of money to keep it out of Setrakian’s hands so it must be worth something huge.
“The Lumen comes very much into play,” Cuse said. “The whole idea of getting our hands on the book was does that book tell us can we kill the Master? Setrakian’s vision for the season is really to see if the answers are in the book.
“He certainly believes the answers are in the book and takes action based on what he finds in the book.”
NEW OPENING CREDITS
One thing you’ll notice right away when ‘The Strain’ debuts on Sunday night are the new credits that open the show. According to Cuse, FX wanted to revamp the opening credits this season and give the show a slightly new look when viewers first set their sights on what’s about to unfold.
So composer Ramin Djwadi — who also composes all the music for ‘Game of Thrones’ — came up with a new title track and the video looks rather amazing as well.
‘The Strain’ returns Sunday night at 10pm ET on FX and don’t miss any of the action with our recaps all season long on Nerdcore Movement!
