Snowpiercer Season 4 Is Already Repeating The Show's 2 Biggest Gambles
Warning: SPOILERS for Snowpiercer Season 3
When Snowpiercer enters season 4, TNT's hit post-apocalyptic series is poised to repeat its two biggest gambles but it should work again just like it has before. Snowpiercer season 3 changed the show forever because Melanie Cavill (Jennifer Connelly) and Andre Layton (Daveed Diggs) split the 1,029-cars-long super train and its passengers between them. Many followed Layton to New Eden, where they disembarked at a warm spot on Earth they can settle. The rest remained aboard Snowpiercer with Melanie as she searches for a different haven. Cavill and Layton also teamed up to banish Mr. Wilford (Sean Bean) from Snowpiercer, ridding both halves of the train of their greatest adversary.
Snowpiercer never remains static or rests on its laurels, and the series laudably takes major chances. Perhaps the biggest risk it took was removing Melanie Cavill from Snowpiercer for most of seasons 2 and 3. Jennifer Connelly is the headlining star of Snowpiercer, along with Daveed Diggs and Sean Bean, but the show gambled by writing Melanie out purely for creative reasons to focus on the rivalry between Layton and Wilford. By the end of Snowpiercer season 2, the show took another huge chance by dividing the cast. Most of Snowpiercer's most popular characters like Bess Till (Mickey Sumner), Alex Cavill (Rowan Blanchard), Bennett Knox (Iddo Goldberg), and even Miss Audrey (Lena Hall), who was taken prisoner, left Snowpiercer aboard Layton's stolen ten-car pirate train. The cast was split for the first three episodes of Snowpiercer season 3 until Layton returned to regain control of the train.
Once again, Snowpiercer is gambling big by playing musical chairs with its series leads and excising Sean Bean's Mr. Wilford. Further, it's unclear if the charismatic billionaire villain will return. In fact, with Wilford gone and other bad guys like Pike (Steven Ogg) and LJ Folger (Annalise Basso) dead, Snowpiercer has gotten rid of all of its villains and will need new ones in season 4. Other TV series, like Roseanne, have lost their lead actors and characters and had to reconfigure their shows. Yet Snowpiercer has the guts to take its main characters off of the game board on purpose to serve the story - and yet, it works and the series doesn't suffer from the loss. Snowpiercer has now resumed its season 1 paradigm of Layton and Melanie as its leads, albeit separated, and the show has left Wilford's fate an open question.
Snowpiercer's seismic shift by permanently dividing the train and characters is perhaps its biggest gamble yet. Layton's Snowpiercer season 3 pirate train ultimately served as a forerunner for half of the cast now in New Eden while the rest ride the rails with Melanie. Big Alice running off the track to get to New Eden also means that Layton's train is unlikely to ever ride again and it prevents Melanie's Snowpiercer from joining them in New Eden. Potentially, all of Snowpiercer season 4 could be jumping back and forth between Melanie's train and New Eden without the characters reuniting. Yet Snowpiercer's writing has been so fundamentally sound and the show's characters are so well-drawn and powerfully performed by the actors that the series will remain compelling.
Behind the scenes is another huge change as Snowpiercer's showrunners, Graeme Manson and Aubrey Nealon, have left the series to be replaced by new showrunner Paul Zbyszewski. This cements the bold new direction for Snowpiercer season 4. In addition, Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Clark Gregg and The Americans' Michael Aronov are joining the cast, likely as part of a new faction of survivors who launched the missile Melanie saw in Snowpiercer season 3's finale. Yet at this point, a divided cast and one of the show's leads, Sean Bean, currently written out, is business as usual for Snowpiercer. These are huge but familiar gambles that Snowpiercer knows how to ride through even as it charts a brand new course in season 4.
Snowpiercer Season 3 is streaming on the TNT app.