Defiance: SDCC 2013 Panel – A Brave New World…Or Is It?

My fellow Defiance fans!

I hope that you made it down to Comic-Con 2013 this year! If not, I am here to give you a taste of what their very first panel was like.

I am hoping that this year will be the first of many years to come for Defiance at Comic-con. It was a lot of fun, probably the most fun I have had at a panel in the last two years.

It was so great to see the cast and producer Kevin Murphy at the con and all the great costumes as well. One fan dressed up with a hellbug on his head…more on that later!

We include the entire panel below near the end of my report for your enjoyment.

I know that we fans have to wait until June 2014 (last I checked) until our show comes back, but hopefully this post will help tide you over until that date. The lucky part with this panel is that since it was their first one, it was in a smaller room (6A) than the other panels which are usually in Ballroom 20 or Hall H. Because of the smaller room I was able to get up close and take some really fantastic pictures.

Now…away we go! Our fabulous moderator for the day was the famously funny and wonderful Maureen Ryan from Huffington Post. She did a great job and seemed to be as happy as all of us fans to be there. If you don’t follow her on twitter, you should!

It made me smile to hear all the cheers for the cast and how the cast took out their phones and took pictures of the crowd. I love that celebrities do that, it means to me that they really do care and love their fans.

It was also fun to see that the cast had a genuine vibe of happiness to be there. The men looked dashing and the women looked gorgeous (no surprise there). One cast member I really wanted to see, but unfortunately was not there was Graham Greene. That would have really made my day, I have been a fan of his for a very long time.

The first question to Kevin Murphy was what is going to happen in Season 2 given the dire circumstances at the end of Season 1? His answer was great, he said “we are going to take the chess board and flip it over so that every single character has a reset”. Sounds like this coming season will be filled with many surprises and then some.

Kevin basically gave us the jist of what may be happening in the new season. He mentioned that Amanda Rosewater (Julie Benz) is in a new line of work, we find out what happened to Irisa (Stephanie Leonidas). He also mentions the Tarr family and what will happen with Datak (Tony Curran) and Stahma (Jaime Murray) now that Kenya (Mia Kirshner) is out of the picture. It Is great that we get to see a shake-up of sorts. It will give the show a different perspective and make it more fun to watch.

Jamie Murray answered a question about how Stahma will deal with her new “role” in the new season. She had made a great point about how Castithan men keep their women in metaphoric cages and how she was trying to control things from that cage.

Once she tasted the outside world, she would not ever want to go back. Kevin Murphy then brought up a great point to counter her statement. He had said that is is equal to an immigrant woman who comes to a new land where the old world rules don’t apply anymore. I thought that was brilliant and right on point.

Of course the question on every fans mind was to Jaime, did Stahma really love Kenya? Her answer was funny, “just because you kill someone doesn’t mean that you didn’t love them and if you think that is the case then you truly have never been in love.” Brilliantly done Jaime, brava! Kevin Murphy capped her remark with “it was the lesbian Sid & Nancy” which made me and the rest of the audience who understood the reference laugh heartily.

That statement along with many others from the cast were one of the many reasons I had such a blast at this panel. The loving jabs and snarky remarks that the cast made to one another was fun for all. It shows that they are a great team of players and that they may tease each other but the love in no doubt there.

Jesse Rath was a great sport when asked about how his family dynamic will change in Season 2. “Father issues and lots of mother issues, too,” was his answer. That is an understatement, he makes Medea and Oedipus look like angels compared to his situation. I guess weird runs in the Tarr family, just look at the mess they got themselves into during Season 1. I cannot wait to see what is yet to come for them in Season 2.

Maureen asked Grant what it was like to be resurrected and he said that since he played Jesus Christ in a film earlier in his career that he had done it before. Grant’s New Zealand accent made his answers that much more fun, especially when he and Tony Curran started mocking each other’s accents. Grant’s Scottish accent was brutally bad and Tony’s New Zealand was no different. It was again, one of the many times the audience was in hysterics over the antics of our beloved cast.

Kevin had mentioned that New Los Angeles will be seen in the second season. Wonder what kind of adventures will be had there? It should be interesting to see what and who Nolan encounters on his search for Irisa.

Tony expounded on the problems that Datak had in Season 1 and how in his infancy a Mayor his life fell apart. He credited Stahma with “finely tuning this blunt instrument” and went on to say that at that point it was like “Datak in the library with the letter opener”, referencing that great board game and movie CLUE. Apparently Tony drops the hint that in the first few episodes of Season 2, Datak is not in Defiance. Where he might be, we will just have to tune in and find out.

Looks like we will be in for some new characters in season 2 as Kevin mentioned a new mayor who is very pro-Earth Republic, that has some “nasty plans for Defiance” Uh-oh, that does not sound good, but then again, we as an audience live for that kind of stuff, especially in Defiance.

There is also talk again of incorporating the show and the video game again as it had been in Season 1. I myself don’t follow or play the game, but I am sure that the fans that do will be in for a new and exciting adventure once Season 2 starts. The game will also be filling in some gaps during the wait for the season to start, so that may help appease some people’s anxiety about waiting for the new season. The game will be evolving whether the show is on or not.

As the panel hilariously moved forward the questions for the audience opened up. We had a Stahma look-a-like and one of my favorite cosplays was a guy wearing a Hellbug on his head. Julie Benz loved it so much that she came down from the stage and took a picture with her with him on her Iphone.

That was so fun, it was a fun costume and very clever. That was the first time I had seen anything like that happen. It was so great that she took the time out to do that! Again, the great benefit of having a smaller room, that would have been so hard to do in Ballroom 20 or Hall H.

The cast got a chance to show their appreciation to the fans when asked about the feedback they have heard from fans. Jaime had mentioned twitter and the great twitter handles she has encountered (Women of Defiance) and the funny things that are said. It is great to see a cast so wonderful to their fans and so grateful by the feedback and just really happy in general about it. Tony in his wonderful Scottish brogue says that the feedback has been humbling and it’s a real joy to have that feedback.

It was such a great panel, and so great to watch our beloved cast have such a blast. What happened at the very end of the panel, though, was what made my love for this show and the actors multiply ten fold. Grant Bowler, being the gentleman that he is, came down the stairs and posed for pictures and signed autographs for the fans.

Tony, Jaime and Julie stayed up on stage and signed autographs, too. That was such a treat, especially since some folks really were shy about asking but Grant was game. He even took two pictures with a fan when the first one did not come out.

I also wished him a Happy Birthday (it was the day before) and I wished Jaime a Happy Birthday as well (hers was a few days later). They both said thanks and that made my day.

Well, Defiance fans, thus is the end of my post. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

I hope that we can all survive until June when the new season and adventure starts in our favorite world of Defiance.

I look forward to seeing them again next year at San Diego Comic-Con in 2014!

I hope you enjoyed my Defiance report from San Diego Comic-Con 2013?

Thank you for visiting WormholeRiders News Agency. And thanks to Kenn for video embedding and additional images for my final SDCC 2013 report. I will be back in the future with more on our series review sites for Dracula, Almost Human and next June for Defiance!

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Until next time,

Regards,

Lori