Season 1 of Netflix’s Locke and Key, the highly anticipated adaptation of Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez’s beloved horror comic, hasn’t even hit Netflix yet–it arrives February 7. But although a second season hasn’t yet been officially greenlit by the streaming service, executive producer Carlton Cuse is in the process of writing Locke and Key Season 2.
“We’re writing Season 2, even though it hasn’t been greenlit. We’re working in a room,” Cuse told GameSpot during an interview with him and Locke and Key showrunner Meredith Averill.
Locke and Key follows the Locke family after a tragedy sends them across the country to take up residence in their ancestral home, Keyhouse–a mysterious mansion filled with magical keys. The comics ran from 2008 to 2013, and fans generally hold the series’ ending in high regard. Giving the way some adaptations have wound up lately, some fans might worry that the Netflix version will eventually diverge so much from the books that the story will become unrecognizable from the version we know and love. Cuse and Averill said that’s a distinct possibility, though they’re determined to tell a story that’s right for the medium of television.
“We can’t really answer that question yet,” Cuse said. “I think by the time we get to the end of the season, we’ll have a better sense of how much longer the show can go. We’ve spent a lot of time talking with Joe [Hill], and I think, in concert with Joe, we’ll figure out the answer to that question. I mean, it is a cool ending, but again, the show’s diverging from the comics and it becomes something [else]. We want to be sure that the ending works for the TV series and we’re not just forcing ourselves into an ending for endings’ sake. We want the ending to be something that really feels like it’s the right conclusion for our story.”
Averill expanded on that thought, acknowledging the various versions of this adaptation that have been attempted in the past, including the Fox-made pilot that screened at San Diego Comic-Con in 2011, as well as the Hulu pilot from a few years ago.
“We always joke that one day there needs to be a college course where they dissect the three different versions of the Locke and Key pilot, because I think it’s a nice lesson that in an adaptation, there’s not one way to kind of skin a cat, to forgive the grotesque saying,” the showrunner said. “But it really shows that there are different ways to tell the story, and this is just the version that we were most excited to tell, that we loved.”
However, there’s another potential hurdle in the show’s future: Successive seasons of the show will naturally need to take place over a longer period of time than the books do, and in the world of the comics, adults have a much harder time perceiving Keyhouse’s magic. When the show begins, Tyler Locke is 17 and his sister Kinsey is 16. What will happen when they’re 18 or in their 20s? How can the story stay the same if the Locke kids become the Locke adults?
“I think that’s something that hopefully will be explored [in future seasons],” Darby Stanchfield, who plays Nina Locke, told GameSpot.
“These are kids who are about to become adults, and we know in the story that when you become an adult your relationship to this world changes,” Connor Jessup, who plays Tyler, agreed. “I’m really curious to explore that.”
There’s one potential solution: In the comics, adults like Nina have an easier time perceiving the keys’ magic when intoxicated. Will the whole family need to be constantly drunk the longer the story goes?
“Gin for everybody!” Stanchfield laughed.
“Yes, I think’s that’s the message we’re trying to say,” Jessup joked.
Locke and Key hits Netflix February 7.
Disclosure: ViacomCBS is GameSpot’s parent company.
