‘American Gods’ Season 2 Featurette: The Old Gods and the New Gods Go to War

american gods season 2 featurette

The gods walk among us, and they’re about to go to war. Starz has released a new American Gods season 2 featurette that delves into the oncoming war between the Old Gods, led by the enigmatic Wednesday (Ian McShane), and the New Gods, who rule over a people held captive by the media and technology. Caught in the middle is the mere human Shadow (Ricky Whittle), the ex-con who has found himself ensnared in Wednesday’s machinations, and his undead wife Laura (Emily Browning).

American Gods Season 2 Featurette

Season 2 picks up right where season 1 left off, with the tension between the Old Gods and the New Gods coming to a volatile boiling point. The gauntlet is thrown by Easter (Kristen Chenoweth) in the season finale, when she is convinced by Wednesday to use her powers of controlling spring to a frightening degree. It was an awe-inspiring moment. But for fans of the novel by Neil Gaiman upon which this show is based, it was an odd place to end the season.

The perfect cliffhanger for the first season of American Gods would have been the House on the Rock, one of the real-life locations that inspired Gaiman to write his magnum opus. It’s a location stuck between worlds — gaudy, bizarre, and a liminal space through which gods and humans could both travel. But we finally get a glimpse of the House on the Rock at the beginning of season 2, and in this featurette, which delves into the build-up to the greatest war that the Earth could witness.

“The House on the Rock is the most glorious piece of mad Americana in America. You’ve got the biggest carousel in the world, full-sized circus, 100-piece mechanical orchestra. All this sort of madness,” Gaiman says in the featurette. It’s an amazing set piece, and hopefully one that will be at the backdrop of the “old versus new” conflict as the Old Gods make one last desperate grasp for relevancy — literally. “There’s only so much belief going around, and [the New Gods] have to be put in their place,” Gaiman says.

“The Old Gods want their world back. They’ve kind of been forgotten,” Whittle adds in the featurette.

The featurette is a promising glimpse for season 2, which has been mired in behind-the-scenes troubles after original showrunners Michael Green and Bryan Fuller were fired after season 1 — either for budget issues or creative issues (aka butting heads with Gaiman). The series soon bled cast members who were loyal to Green and Fuller, and the new showrunner Jesse Alexander did little to assuage concerns, apparently getting fired soon after. But hopefully season 2 will come out of the conflict for the better, as evidenced by this intriguing featurette.

American Gods season 2 premieres on Starz on March 10, 2019.

Ex-convict Shadow Moon roams a world he doesn’t understand, left adrift by the recent, tragic death of his wife. Little does he know his life is about to change after he meets a crafty, charismatic con man named Mr. Wednesday, who offers Shadow a job as his bodyguard. As their journey begins, Shadow encounters a hidden America where magic is real and fear grows over the ascending power of New Gods like Technology and Media. In a grand plan to combat the threat, Mr. Wednesday attempts to unite the Old Gods to defend their existence and rebuild the influence that they’ve lost, leaving Shadow struggling to accept this new world and his place in it.

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