‘Locke & Key’ Showrunner Explains Kinsey’s Evolution in Season 2

Of all the Locke children in Locke & Key Season 2, Kinsey Locke (Emilia Jones) arguably goes through the biggest evolution. By season’s end — and spoilers past this point — Kinsey has essentially saved everyone, using multiple magical keys and facing down the villainous Dodge (Laysla de Oliveira) all by herself.

“It was very important to us to show how much Kinsey has evolved from this frightened, anxiety ridden clenched girl that we met in the pilot,” co-showrunner Meredith Averill told Decider. “This girl who, when her family was being attacked, was paralyzed under the table, to show how far she has grown and her confidence to be able to face down Dodge in that finale.”

In the first season, as Averill describes, Kinsey is shown cowering in fear while her father Rendell (Bill Heck) is shot and killed by an intruder. Though a lot of Season 1 was about Kinsey coming around to understanding that just because she was hiding doesn’t mean that’s a bad thing, it ultimately led to her literally getting rid of her fear by taking it out of her head and burying it in the backyard.

In Season 2, Kinsey’s living representation of fear is taken captive by villains Gabe (Griffin Gluck) and Eden (Hallea Jones), before Kinsey decides she’s only living half her life — or at least half her emotions. Thanks to a tip from her brother Bode (Jackson Robert Scott), she’s able to summon her fear, and reinsert it back in her head.

It’s this new, whole Kinsey who takes the wing-enabling Angel Key, the shadow controlling Crown of Shadows, and the super-strength granting Hercules Key, and essentially turns into a superhero at the end. But before all that’s revealed, Kinsey confronts Gabe, her former boyfriend who was secretly the demon taunting and torturing the Lockes for the past few seasons.

Gabe has given Kinsey an ultimatum: join him as a demon, or her mother dies. Part distraction, part declaration of independence, Kinsey stands in front of Gabe and rejects him, his offer, and the idea that he’d ever be able to kill her mother, because Kinsey would never let him. She’s not scared of him anymore, because she embraced her fear.

“That’s a tremendous moment when she’s standing on the balcony, telling Gabe that she’s never ever going to join him, and what she does next,” Averill continued. “It’s a tremendous arc for her that we get to see, where she’s evolved to in that moment.”

Now that we’ve got Kinsey 2.0, we’ll have to see where that evolution continues in Season 3.

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