“It’s sort of like the Grand Budapest Hotel throughout this century,” explained Matalas. “In the 1940’s it was like this is the hotel; this is the place you wanted to be. But in 2016 it has ATMs and hookers and crack. So it kind of shows the passage of time like the deterioration that happens throughout. It’s pretty spectacular.” Why Cole must travel decades deeper back into the twentieth century remains unknown, but the differences should really set season 2 apart. “I think the theme of this season is that time is on our side, but there may be somebody who is against time,” Matalas said. Is he referring to the twelve white-faced men who infiltrated Dr. Jones’ lab at the end of season 1 or someone else? “At the end of last season, the time machine was taken over by those 12 hooded men, and there’s only one reason to get yourself a time machine: you want to use it,” Matalas insisted. “So that is very much — right from the get-go, right from the first fifteen minutes of this next season — they have an agenda, and we’re going to start seeing that.” When asked to characterize season 2 and what made it different from season 1, Matalas put it this way: “Last season was about in a lot of ways fatherhood. It was Jennifer Goines dealing with the fact that her father hated her. It was the fact that Ramse was a father and didn’t know how to have a mission that conflicted with that. Cole witnessed the death of his father. This season is all about mothers. Motherhood and what that means, from our villains to our heroes.” But when it comes to time travel, Matalas makes his own rules that might even confuse Dr. Jones. “Jones is very much a scientist and relies on Hawking and Goedel and Schrodinger and all the quantum physics that are involved with time travel,” explained Matalas, “and she will learn she has to throw all of that away and look at it in another way. So time and what time wants and how time works and how time and human beings may work together plays a big part in this season.”
