‘Extant’ Season 2 Spoilers: First Look At The Halle Berry ‘Warrior’ Revamp

Extant Season 2 will premiere on CBS this July, and fans of the Halle Berry series will see a very different show on the network. The producers behind the series went in and revamped the sci-fi series in a big way.

That revamp becomes clearer after the release of the first trailer for Season 2 by Entertainment Weekly on Thursday. Halle Berry is back as Molly Woods, an astronaut that was impregnated by an alien while on a year-long mission in space.

Season 2 showed her pregnancy and focused on the discovery of the alien species on this planet. Season 2 will shift its focus to Molly’s search for her alien offspring.

Back in December, TV Line reported that the change in focus for the series would mean a change in the cast. Jeffrey Dean Morgan has joined the cast as a cop who will meet Molly in a “very unlikely way.”

Liz Kruger, one of the executive producers of the series, spoke about his role in a recent interview.

“[Morgan] plays, essentially, the cop of the future, and we’re approaching policing in the future a little bit like Uber approaches taxi driving. It’s been privatized to some degree, and you work by the piece… You can accept or decline different crimes, and they pay different amounts. He and Molly cross paths in the first episode. They are classic opposites: Molly is an astronaut, a scientist, she’s been to space, she has a dual PhD in things that most people can’t pronounce. He’s your everyman. It’s something that I think a lot of us thought the show was sort of missing last year, the audience perspective, the audience everyman in the situation, who is looking at these extraordinary events and saying, ‘Holy hell, there are aliens!'”

The cast changes meant that fans would see a lot less of Goran Visnjic and Camryn Manheim. Each will appear in only a couple of episodes during Extant Season 2. Those episodes will air at the start of the season. Then, it is teased that both characters will exit the series “under circumstances the producers don’t want to spoil.”

Pierce Gagnon, who played Molly’s robotic son, and Grace Gummer have stayed regular members of the cast for Season 2.

Liz Kruger spoke about the new direction of the series in an interview with Yahoo! TV in March.

“I think Season 2 is a little sexier, a little soapier. It’s a substantial reboot, in that we’re going to come in, in this time and place, several months [after the Season 1 finale], and that puts Molly in a completely different head space. Her mental stability is potentially in question, and we’re going to find out how that happens. There is a significant amount of new casting that changes the landscape of what we’re doing, and it’s less about Molly as mom, and more about Molly as warrior. Molly as a sexy warrior.”

David Morrissey has also joined the series. He is best known for his role as the Governor on The Walking Dead. He will come in as an old friend of Molly’s, and he is “head of the Global Security Commission” on the series.

Extant was a hot summer series for CBS last year, but it did have some ratings troubles. The network did pick up the series for a second season, but the revamp was done in hopes of bringing in more viewers to the Halle Berry series.

What do you think? Are you ready for the return of Extant to CBS?

[Image courtesy of CBS]