FX’s The Strain was one of the summer’s guiltiest pleasures, an immeasurably silly but still compelling thriller about a group of CDC scientists attempting to stem the flow of a centuries-old vampire epidemic purposely brought to New York by an ancient evil. And though we’ll have to wait until the summer to see where it goes in season 2, FX is ensuring that we keep The Strain in mind by unveiling a new teaser for the series.
It seems early for the network to be promoting The Strain again, but it did market the first season for many months before its summer premiere as well. There’s not much context to the teaser, though if the show can follow through on the promise of depicting a full-on, bloodsuckers-versus-humans battle in the streets of New York, that will already be a step up on season 1, which only mounted a few truly impressive action sequences. Now that the Master has retreated into the shadows and our heroes are pondering their next move to stop him, perhaps it makes sense that the show is harnessing more of a World War Z-meets-The Walking Dead kind of vibe.
Carlton Cuse returns as showrunner on the second season, and though Guillermo del Toro was too busy with other projects to direct another episode, he did second-unit work and helped to craft the narrative for the upcoming season. On the other side of the screen, Corey Stoll, Mia Maestro, David Bradley, Kevin Durand, Jonathan Hyde, Richard Sammel, Natalie Brown, Miguel Gomez, Ruta Gedmintas and Jack Kesy are all expected to reprise their roles. Lizzie Brochere and Samantha Mathis will join the cast, and Max Charles will take over the role of Zach Goodweather from Ben Hyland (producers said that they needed to recast the part “due to some specific story needs we have downstream” – aka, they needed someone with a broader range).
The Strain will return to FX sometime this summer.