Comic-Con: 'Powers' Producers Say 'Who Killed Retro Girl' Won't Be Who Fans Expect

"It'll be a complete surprise and very different from what it was in the book," showrunner Rene Aubuchon told fans Thursday.
Courtesy of Sony Pictures Television

If fans thought that they knew where the second season of Sony's Powers was going to go after Michelle Forbes' Retro Girl was murdered in the final episode, co-creator and series producer Brian Michael Bendis threw a wrench in the works during the show's panel Friday at Comic-Con.

"She's coming back this season as zombie Retro Girl," he joked. "She's going to come back and team up with Deena to solve her own murder."

That might not be happening, but Forbes is returning for season two in a way that producers are not willing to reveal just yet ("Did Retro Girl have a twin sister?" Bendis joked, referencing Twin Peaks), and the main thrust of the show's second season will be the investigation into who killed Retro Girl.

"When episode 10 hit, people were like, 'I can't believe you did that,'" Bendis said when talking about fan reaction to the murder. "I was like, 'I can't believe you can't believe I did that, that's the title of the first book.'" That said, showrunner Remi Aubuchon promised that comic book fans won't be spoiled on the culprit. "It'll be a complete surprise and very different from what it was in the book. But another mystery will be, who was Retro Girl?"

The answer to that question might lead to some unexpected places, with Powers comic book artist and producer Michael Avon Oeming teasing that E's True Hollywood Story was an influence on early issues of the comic book, and that might continue into the television series. "Now that Retro Girl's dead, we're going to find out a lot of secrets," he promised.

Another comic book influence for the show's second season will be the introduction of a major new player: Super Shock, who Bendis described as "the most powerful hero in the Powers universe. Superheroes were named after him, he never took an advertisement dollar, he didn't do product placement, he kept it pure. But with him comes a whole new set of problems. We'll discover the Powers universe through him." Other characters from the comic book will also make their debuts in the new season, Aubuchon said.

Even with the new additions, the second season will focus on bringing Walker (Sharlto Copley) and Deena (Susan Heyward) closer together. "The moment where Walker and Deena have their guns at the end of the first season, where they're hunting Wolf, and they have to work together or everyone's going to die — that was a big moment for me, and I'd like to do more of that," Heyward said, while Aubuchon said that the two working together would be "the only way they'll get to solve the crime. [Walker] has to let go enough to let Deena help him. But Deena has her own issues that she needs to work through."

"One of the things we want to do in the second season is amp everything up," the showrunner said. "We want it to be faster and louder, we want to amp the visual effects as well. We started to find the momentum of the show in the middle of the first season, and we want to keep pushing that."

And if you're wondering who did kill Retro Girl? Aubuchon and Bendis teased that close rewatching of the first season might offer some clues. "It's worth asking, is the way the Kaotic Chic tag found beside the corpse written the same as it was every other time it appeared in the season?" Aubuchon said, prompting Bendis to joke, "Different handwriting, you say? I should start paying attention in the writer's room."

Powers season two will be released on PlayStation platforms in 2016.