Just when you thought The Order couldn’t top season 1, the show took things to a whole new stratosphere. After Alyssa had unleashed magic into the world, she bid farewell to Jack and walked away. When Alyssa opened the door, Gabrielle attacked her in werewolf form while being possessed by Midnight. Alyssa’s throat was ripped out, and Jack desperately tried to save her.
So, is Alyssa gone for good? HollywoodLife asked that question and more while speaking EXCLUSIVELY with The Order creator Dennis Heaton. He also opened up about where Jack is taking Alyssa at the end of the episode, the Vera and Alyssa dynamic that was at the forefront of season 2, Lilith’s storyline, and more. Of course, we had to ask Dennis about how Jason Priestley and Ian Ziering ended up on the show — as themselves.
Okay, is Alyssa really dead?
Dennis Heaton: Is Alyssa really dead? Yes. She is dead. She had her throat ripped out by a werewolf.
If there were to be a season 3, would Sarah [Grey] be coming back?
Dennis Heaton: I definitely would hope so. It was one of those situations when I wrote the script, and we were figuring out what the finale was going to be because, obviously, we wanted to do something to match you the season 1 cliffhanger in terms of making sure the world hates us. It was like, well, let’s just straight up kill somebody. As soon as I wrote that scene I was like, well, I better phone Sarah.
Was Alyssa the person that you were envisioning from the very beginning? Or was it as you got more into the season you realized Alyssa made the most sense?
Dennis Heaton: It’s kind of a combination of the two. In a sense, when you’re writing a season of TV, you’ll start the season and have a ton of ideas. As you start to write and get into the minutiae of each episode, those ideas change or they change position. It was definitely an early conversation about where we could go this season. Where did we want to go emotionally with our characters? I knew emotionally I wanted to feel like there were new alliances and relationships forming for everybody, but that those relationships were tearing apart the old relationships. Part of that conversation became, well, what’s the ultimate fissure of a relationship? That is where one of us stays alive and the other one moves on to the next realm. It was like, somebody’s going to go. I think at one point, we may have shifted it over to Randall for a couple of days.
Where was Jack taking her in those final moments?
Dennis Heaton: The forest to me is a very important visual setting for this show. Because I’ve always felt The Order is a bit of a fairy tale. These are all young people. They’re all college student age. They all have sort of varying levels of emotional maturity. For me, it’s always important to see the children in the woods with the monsters sort of encircling them. It’s a very fairy tale-esque quality that I love to apply to the show. In terms of where Jack’s going, for me, he’s just taking Alyssa into the dark woods. He’s got a very powerful book of magic with them, and the corpse of his beloved. We’ll see what happens next.
At the end of the finale was this quick scene that held a lot of impact — the one with Hamish and Vera. Vera is still without her magic, and Hamish is the one to shut the door with magic. There seems to a tip of the balance between them. Is that something you were going for?
Dennis Heaton: Definitely. All the aspects of the relationships go back to that other point I was making. As the relationships change, so do the power dynamics. For Hamish to be standing there and being the magic behind the leader is a fun image. I loved it. I was on set that day just to watch that image get shot.
Jack begged Alyssa to give Vera her magic back so she could save her. Do you think Vera has any regret that she couldn’t save Alyssa?
Dennis Heaton: Vera regrets it. In my mind, what I love about Vera and Alyssa’s relationship is that it’s very complicated. Alyssa is very much one of the best, if not the best, members of The Order that has ever come up through the ranks. For Vera, that was something she saw, but she also saw the problems in Alyssa that she wanted to sort of groom out of her, in terms of making her a leader more in her image. We started season 1 with Alyssa very much wanting a mentorship and relationship with Vera, and Vera almost actively avoiding that with her. In a lot of ways, I think they’re very similar people. I think that always tends to cause greater conflict between two characters if they’re too close together in terms of personality.
Another aspect of the season was this journey to find Lilith and to get Lilith back. She was gone for most of the season. Why was that character one that you wanted to revolve a mystery around throughout the whole season?
Dennis Heaton: The truth of the situation is it was a little beyond my control. When you’re working with an actor as talented as Devery Jacobs, things are going to happen schedule-wise that are just outside of my control. We had a situation of conflict, and we had to come up with a creative solution. Luckily, that was a solution that we could work into what we had been developing in the season already. It was kind of like the tail wagging the dog.
The development of Randall and Gabrielle was delightful. I think they have so much chemistry. However, Gabrielle was the one to technically kill Alyssa while she was possessed by Midnight. How might Randall’s feelings for her impact the rest of the Knights?
Dennis Heaton: It’s definitely dicey. But that’s exactly where I wanted to end the season. I wanted the season the end on the ceiling of just how far apart everybody was with their old relationships as they embark on these new ones. As much as Randall and Gabby are going to be a problem for the other Knights, so is Hamish and Vera, and Lilith and where she wants to be. And let’s face it, I don’t think anybody could ever say that carrying the corpse of your girlfriend into the forest is a healthy thing to be doing emotionally.
How did the Jason Priestley and Ian Ziering cameos happen?
Dennis Heaton: That came about because of the dinner we had at Comic-Con last year that Nomadic threw for Van Helsing and The Order because we were both there at the convention. Ian and Jason are friends of Nomadic having worked on other shows with them. They were invited to the dinner as well. I’d worked with Jason on other shows. I just thought it would be funny to find out that 90210 exists because a magic secret society made it happen.