“Midnight, Texas” Exclusive: Monica Owusu-Breen on ‘Bad Moon Rising’s Shocking Deaths, Tethered Xylda & More
Monday’s episode of NBC’s Midnight, Texas had so many twists and turns, we’re still picking our jaws up from the floor. In addition to the shocking deaths of two characters, the Rev’s secret was out of the bag, and the show’s bigger story was unveiled.
Speaking with the supernatural series’ showrunner Monica Owusu-Breen, OMFGTV looks back at some of the major developments of the season’s second episode, titled, “Bad Moon Rising.”
In an earlier chat with the Showrunner and Executive Producer, Owusu-Breen explains that in each episode, “we unpack one of the Midnighters.” The second installment of the series is about the Rev, played by Yul Vazquez. We learn that once a month, Olivia (Arielle Kebbel) locks him up in the basement during the full moon, because, surprise, he’s a weretiger!
For the close-knit group of Midnight’s supernatural outsiders, they are aware of the Rev’s secret as well as each other’s. It appears, however, that Creek (Sarah Ramos) was out of the loop, and was surprised that a tiger was loose all over town.
“Creek suspects the Rev is some sort of were. (werewolf would be the go-to assumption.),” Owusu-Breen tells us. “The Rev didn’t hide the fact that he locks himself up on nights of full moons. But the Rev is a man of few words. He doesn’t share details if he doesn’t need to. And he didn’t need to. Midnighters are pretty cool with their neighbors keeping secrets. They don’t usually pry.”
We were very impressed with the tiger on the show for how realistic it looked. While a lot of shows and movies will do a mixture of both a real-life wild animal and visual effects, the EP reveals that the tiger was “all CG!”
“Peter Mensah (Lem) wrestled a man in a blue sumo suit. The dailies were quite funny. The company that did the tiger for The Walking Dead did our weretiger. We couldn’t be happier with the finished product.”
One of the other things we were impressed by in the episode was Fiji’s (Parisa Fitz-Henley) Devil’s Net that she uses to perform her exorcism at Manfred’s (François Arnaud) house. It looked very cool and had us wanting one of our own! So major props to the prop department on that. The Midnight, Texas EP shares that “we’ll see many of Fiji’s tools throughout the season.”
“Fiji considers her craft both an art and a science and she takes it very seriously,” she says. “She uses herbs, gems, stones, and all manner of magical instruments. Some of these are hers. Others were passed down from her great aunt. They’re weird and very cool.”
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What — or who — we won’t see, however, throughout the season is Madonna’s (Kellee Stewart) husband and child. They do exist, but viewers won’t meet them just yet.
“Sadly, because we only had 10 episodes, we had to narrow our focus which meant narrowing our group of characters,” Owusu-Breen says. “So this season we won’t see Teacher and Grady. But at the end of the season, we do introduce a mystery with Madonna. And if we get a season two — I’m hoping we get to meet Teacher and Grady.”
Two characters we have met — Sheriff Livingston (Sean Bridgers) and Deputy Gomez (Lora Martinez-Cunningham) — we were 100% positive would play a big role throughout the season in investigating the death of Aubrey. We were even beginning to warm up to Gomez! So when the two of them DIED (Gomez kinda deserved it, though, after going into that basement), that pretty much solidified the rule on the show that no one is safe.
The Showrunner reveals how the deaths will affect the Midnight gang and why killing them off was necessary to propel the story forward. “After these two deaths, Midnighters become more closed off and protective of their community,” she says. “They want even less to do with strangers and with the outside world.
“Livingston’s death also introduces us to Peter Lowry (Evan Jones),” she continues. “Aubrey’s husband and a man who has his sights set on Bobo (for reason’s we discover later in the season.) And from this introduction, we see what a cruel, violent and awful human being Lowry is.”
While all this is going down, Manfred has a house full of evil spirits to tend to and enlists the help of Fiji to perform a cleanse and make it inhospitable to the dead. When her exorcism goes awry and a demon has a hold of the witch (Why he trying to get up her dress?), the psychic runs into his RV to retrieve an item that will hopefully help his neighbor be free of the demon’s grasp. So why was Manfred’s grandmother Xylda (Joanne Camp) just chillin’ in the RV without a care in the world? Is she unable to help her grandson?
“That’s just Xylda,” Owusu-Breen says. “She marches to the beat of her own drum. Sarcastic, quick to laugh, and she never sweats the small stuff. And since she’s dead, a lot of the concerns of the living are small stuff. Manfred’s the high strung worrier. But it takes a lot to freak Xylda out.
“And even if Xylda was inclined to help, she couldn’t,” she explains. ” Xylda’s spirit is tethered to the RV. She can’t leave it.”
From watching the series opener, you’d think that Aubrey’s murder would be the central storyline this season, but as we discover in the final seconds of “Dark Moon Rising,” we learn that there’s a much bigger story being told. As Joe (Jason Lewis) reveals to his parter Chuy (Bernardo Saracino), there’s a prophecy of a rising army to battle evil and seal a veil that’s keeping dark forces on the other side.
“As the veil starts to fray, evil energy will seep from the veil,” she says, “attracting evil supernatural beings to Midnight. Eventually this evil will begin to effect the Midnighters themselves. And then things get really weird…”
With all the shocking deaths, twisty revelations, and much more, Monica Owusu-Breen promises that the best is yet to come!
“You can expect surprises of ALL types this season!”
Midnight, Texas airs Mondays at 10pm on NBC.