‘Stitchers’ Season 2 Premiere: Who Really Died, and a Surprising Discovery

Spoiler alert! Don’t read the following unless you’ve watched the Stitchers season premiere.

The Stitchers team is back for a second season and they brought some answers—along with a live and well Cameron (Kyle Harris).

First up was the reveal that Kirsten’s (Emma Ishta) temporal dysplasia had been cured, granting her the ability to feel emotions again. Only this couldn’t have come at a worse time for the tech-savvy memory hopper when the head of the Stitchers program, Les Turner (Oded Fehr), was murdered—but not before revealing the purpose of the entire Stitchers program: to help accelerate evolution in the human brain.

Turner’s death caused Maggie (Salli Richardson) to come under suspicion, but luckily, Kirsten stitched into the former leader’s memories and eventually pieced together the truth—that her own father, Daniel Stinger, was responsible. And if this wasn’t enough for Kirsten to deal with, the team also discovered Ed Clark’s dead body, which had been frozen so his memories could still be stitched into long after death.

RELATED: Here’s What Happened on the Stitchers Season Finale

With the season premiere serving up quite a few answers—including where October’s one-off special fit into the series timeline—and setting up even more questions, TV Insider turned to executive producer Jeff Schechter for some answers. 

I was not expecting Les Turner to die. How did you guys come to the decision that he dies in the season premiere?
Nobody really wanted to kill off Les Turner, [but] we also knew that after the events of [the season finale], with Fisher in the hospital, Cameron having a near death experience and Kirsten [being] emotionally vulnerable, everybody’s a wreck. It would be perfectly understandable if somebody said, “What about not taking any cases the next couple of weeks. I think we all need some mental health days.” [So] we knew that everybody going on vacation would be a very boring first episode for us. We needed what we kept calling the undeniable case. What’s the case where no matter how emotionally overwrought everybody is, it’s the case they just cannot say no to? [So] the victim had to be somebody of such magnitude and the case itself had to have implications at the personal level for our characters. Short of killing off somebody even closer to our team, Les Turner became that person. Plus, whatever secrets we wanted to give away about the Stitchers program as a way of teasing out the season, Les Turner would have those.

Kirsten’s dad is now connected to Les’s death. Can you tease anything about that?
Kirsten’s obsessive drive is “find my dad.” She knows that her dad is connected and is up to something. The fact that he killed Ed Clark and Les Turner and obviously hasn’t tried to kill Kirsten [means] he needs her for some reason. So she wants to bring the fight to him. [But] she doesn’t know what Dad’s up to. [However] by the end of the season, we do get a sense of that.

When Les is talking to Maggie about the purpose of the program, “to help accelerate evolution in the human brain,” is that the real purpose of the program?
One of the things we tried to do with Les, even going back to Season 1, is have him actually tell the truth whenever he can. He’s not one of those guys who will make up stories and try to remember what lies he told. It doesn’t occur to him, so Les answers direct questions. For the most part, we agreed that Les would always tell the truth, when he could. When he tells Maggie the purpose of the program is to “evolve the human brain,” it turns out that is actually true. There’s some good mysteries and secrets out there within the Stitchers program, but we don’t have to continue to hide the actual purpose of the Stitchers program any further.

VIDEO: Kirsten’s Stitchers Suit Gets a Makeover in Season 2

Will the rest of the team discover that this is the secret of the program, or are they really not focused on that?
At this point, I don’t think they really focus on it yet. Maggie knows. [But] I don’t think the rest of the team knows yet. They have bigger fish to fry this season. Eventually, it will come out clearly what they’re doing and why they’re doing it.

What does them finding Ed Clark’s body mean for the team going forward?
He’s the missing piece in a way…[and] is somehow behind a lot of this. Who else is working with him? Is it somebody within the NSA? Is it somebody within the team who is secretly helping Stinger? Ed Clark’s the key to that because [the team] knows somebody killed Turner but they’re not sure who. Stitching into Ed Clark confirms that the same person who killed Ed also killed Turner. Kirsten puts the pieces together and figures out it’s her dad. Now it’s like, how far down this rabbit hole does she go and how deep is the rabbit hole itself?

Cam and Kirsten now have badges. How does it affect their relationship with Fisher? Does this mean that they’re out in the field more with him?
Yeah, they become, in some weird way, equals because they’re both carrying badges. In other ways, [Fisher] becomes more of what he is, which is this older, more mature presence in their life. He becomes a bit of a mentor to them, particularly to Camille in the season. He’s somebody who gets closer to the team as well, in a big brother capacity but [also] as a field operative with them.

Halloween special

We see that that Kirsten chooses not to tell Cameron about the montage of memories that she saw in his head. What does that mean for her to have seen that?
It’s like she accidentally read his diary. Early on in the episode, she’s not in any emotionally prepared state to talk about it in any real way. As it gets further and further into the season, it’s not the right thing to say to him, at least not at that time. So she’s being protective, in a way, of him. It’s not like she doesn’t feel guilty. She doesn’t feel like it’s her place to throw that in his face.

The butterfly tattoo

Fans have been asking where last year’s Halloween episode fits within the chronology of the series. This episode offers a clue of that. What can you explain about that?
You know when Cameron is in the hospital [in the season premiere] and he goes “I had the craziest dream. You were an angel and I was a hero?” [Well,] the Halloween episode is half inside of Cameron’s head when he’s flatlined and caught up in that world between life and death. There are a whole bunch of clues in the Halloween episode… Everything in the
episode seems like it’s all about what Kirsten is most afraid of. [But] it really is what’s Cameron most afraid of. He’s afraid of losing Kirsten. He’s afraid of not protecting her in the tank and there being another accident like with Martha. Which is why, when Kirsten is having her nightmare about the disaster in the tank and when it fills up with the dark liquid, the first thing she sees is a butterfly, which goes back to a tattoo Martha (who was Cameron’s sort-of girlfriend) had on her wrist. It’s all these clues. And whose fantasy, really, is it for Kirsten and Cameron to get into bed? For Kirsten to say, “Hey, would you stay the night with me?” It’s Cameron’s fantasy, even though it looks like it’s all from Kirsten’s perspective. The Halloween episode is all really from Cameron’s perspective.

When Camille and Linus are talking at the hospital and he declares that he’s going to move out, she has a reaction. Was she expecting him to say something else?
I don’t know if she was expecting him to say something else. I hate to say it, [but] I’m not sure Camille has the confidence in Linus that he’s going to carry through with [his plan to move out]. She does kind of look at him [because] she’s this woman who’s had all these experiences and stuff has happened to her in her life and Linus hasn’t. He’s a very sheltered kind of kid and has loving parents. Camille finds [this] very appealing in some ways [and] she obviously loves Linus’s parents. She also wants to let him off the hook in a way… in the event that he comes up short and moves back in with his parents, or it’s a total disaster that he’s moved out. She’s kind of letting him off a little bit easy just in case it doesn’t work out.

What is in store for Maggie? Will there be a new head of the program?
She becomes the head of the Stitchers program. It’s a bit of a promotion, one which she’s not necessarily sure she wants. [But] there’s nobody else to step in. Maggie, if nothing else, is very dutiful. She’s very protective of the gang and her team and has a great sense of duty. Better her, even if she doesn’t want it, than somebody else.

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Stitchers airs Tuesday at 9/8c on Freeform.