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How SYFY's The Ark Borrowed a Page From Star Wars For Biggest Change Yet in Season 2
With big story surprises and new VFX tech, The Ark ups the visual stakes in the aftermath of last season’s big finale.
SYFY’s hit science fiction series The Ark is just days away from embarking on an ambitious new second season, picking up the surprising story threads left dangling at the end of Season 1’s frenzied cliffhanger finish.
A huge space bang and some well-timed treachery left the Ark One, humanity’s savior space vessel, in tatters in the big Season 1 sendoff, leaving fans grasping for answers at who might’ve survived the finale’s planet-sized catastrophe (or, perhaps more crucially, who might not have).
Dean Devlin (Stargate, Independence Day) and Jonathan Glassner (Stargate SG-1) created The Ark as a SYFY original series, and the two also serve as ongoing showrunners. With the show’s growing fan base carrying upsized anticipation into the start of Season 2, Devlin says the creative team relished the opportunity to make The Ark’s second outing feel bigger, vaster, and more awesome to behold than ever before.
For more on The Ark:
Everything to Know About The Ark Season 2 on SYFY
The Ark Season 2 Key Art Promises a "Brighter Future" as SYFY Hit Returns (EXCLUSIVE)
What to Remember from The Ark’s First Season Before the Big Season 2 Premiere
Dean Devlin on The Ark Season 2: 'We really wanted to step up our game'
“We were so thrilled last year to get six and-a-half million people watching the show,” Devlin recently shared with SYFY WIRE. “It was a compliment beyond words. And we just felt, you know, we really have to step up our game in every level — we’ve got to step up our game in production value; in special effects; in photography.”
Set in deep space as humanity’s last remnants ply the void in the hope of colonizing a new home planet, The Ark has so far confined most of its action to the inside of the Ark One and neighboring spacecraft. But as Season 2 unfolds, could Lt. Sharon Garnet (Christie Burke) and the rest of the ship’s crew finally find a place to touch down and go exploring?
Without spoiling anything specific about what’s in store, Devlin said the new batch of episodes places a big emphasis on exceeding viewers’ expectations — and that it’s leaning on some next-level special effects tech to add a new layer of visual oomph to Season 2’s sleek sci-fi spectacle.
“In every way we could, we needed to reward that audience ... so we got ourselves onto a ‘volume’ ... You know — that same technology they used on The Mandalorian,” Devlin explained, referring to the groundbreaking VFX technology developed by ILM and Epic Games, which allows actors to film in front of an oversized LED video wall projection instead of a blank green screen.
“So that you can go to other planets and see things that we’ve never seen before; make our sets look better," Devlin continued. "We brought in new designers to deal with the changes in our sets. So we really wanted to step up our game in a big way.”
With stepped-up new sights to match the tensely-wound plot threads already sewn into The Ark’s Season 1 finale, the arrival of new episodes can’t get here fast enough.
Tune in on Wednesday, July 17 at 10/9c for the Season 2 premiere of The Ark on SYFY. Need to catch up with the story so far? Stream Season 1 in its entirety on Peacock here.
