‘Locke & Key’: How Eden And Gabe’s Villainous Duo “Rose to the Occasion”

One of the most delightful aspects of Locke & Key Season 2? The villainous duo of Gabe (Griffin Gluck) and Eden (Hallea Jones). It’s something that doesn’t exist at all in the comics source material by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez, and according to co-showrunner Carlton Cuse it’s something that came up naturally through the process of creating Seasons 1 and 2.

“One of the things I feel like you learn over the years as a showrunner is to listen to your show and, and, and watch what the show presents to you,” Cuse told Decider. “And with Griffin and Hallea, there was this incredibly fun dynamic. The two of them fell into this rhythm as characters, and we just started writing to it.”

At the end of Season 1, we find out that Gabe isn’t the sweet, nerdy kid we thought he was… He’s actually Dodge, the show’s main villain in disguise. And the season ends with Gabe riding his bicycle, extremely evilly. Part of that evil, something that Gabe and the demon-infected Eden do so well throughout Season 2, is smile evilly — something, it turns out, that takes a lot of work.

“When we did Season 1, at the very last episode where you find out Gabe’s evil and he has that evil smirk, we spent a lot of time working on that smile,” Gluck said. “Tim Southam was the director and we biked down this street very slowly for about two hours just to get that smile right. And after every single time we would cut … we had a list of 10 different emotions ranging from evil to happy. And he was like, ‘let’s bring this down 10%, this one up five, this one down two, this one up seven. And this one bump up 50% just for fun.’ And I’d be okay, yeah, I’ll try and work with that. And we landed on that, on that evil smirk.”

For Jones, the villainous grin came a little easier — particularly since her character was already pretty mean in the first season. “I don’t practice in the mirror much,” Jones noted, “but it reminds me of when the Mirror Key that you can trap your enemies in, in the show, and Darby [Stanchfield]’s smile and Nina and Kinsey, Emilia [Jones], and Darby, their smile was so creepy, and I wanted to always keep Eden having a lot of fun and being very bubbly while still doing these atrocious things.”

Added Cuse, “It was so fun to see that Hallea, Eden was playing this demon who really didn’t want to follow the rules. And yes, there are rules for demons and that dynamic between the two of them was just so fun. So we just wrote to it and it ended up being great. Hallea really rose to the occasion.”

Again, given that Eden is just amped up several thousand notches, it’s not too much of a surprise to see her eating a popcorn vender in the first episode, or screaming and torturing the Locke children. Gluck, though, found that it was a bit more of a challenge, given he could “not overpower a butterfly” in real life.

“I watched a lot of different kinds of people play evil and tried to draw some inspiration from that,” Gluck explained. “But, at the end of the day, I just found that going on to set and actually just enjoying myself, being evil was the best way to do it, is because evil people don’t feel bad about themselves when they’re evil.”

One other aspect of the characters’ villainy? Those demons like to eat. And in fact, there’s barely a scene where Eden in particular isn’t chowing down on massive amounts of food; from pizza, to popcorn, to slamming a whole bottle of whiskey. Turns out (other than the whiskey), Jones actually ate most of that in real life.

“I love food,” Jones said, laughing. “I love pizza, all these things. I don’t eat dairy or meat. So a lot of it was dairy free, alternative stuff, which doesn’t always taste that great. Especially after a few hours. I consumed a lot of food and I always made the mistake of snacking on it between takes at the beginning. And by the end of filming, I was like, ugh, I never want to eat popcorn ever again.”

Ultimately — and massive spoilers here — Gabe and Eden are dead at the end of the season… Gabe has been “unlocked” from his demon thanks to something called the Alpha Key, while Eden has been thrown down a well by new series villain Captain Frederick Gideon (Kevin Durand). But just because they’re both dead, there’s still a chance they could come back in Season 2 of the series.

“There’s always a chance,” Gluck said. “We’ve got magic, and movie magic.”

Added Jones, “We’ll see. Dot, dot, dot.”

Fingers crossed these bad guys will return, because we need more of this dynamic duo. Locke & Key is now streaming on Netflix.

Where to watch Locke & Key