What floated to the surface?
And then it was figuring outwhere we do Yorktown, basically.
Is that the target?
Credit: AMC
Because we left off in the fall of 1780.
Is there a time shift?
We pick up a month or so after, and we work our way through that year.
Does that mean you actually shoot a Yorktown sequence?
It’s going to be huge.
The second season left the political situation in Setauket upside down.
Judge Woodhull cleverly outmaneuvered Simcoe, and Abe isn’t necessarily an undercover spy anymore.
Where do we pick up there?
There’s a totally new dynamic between father and son.
The abuses piled up.
Those were concentrated in the character of Simcoe and that’s what pushed Richard over the edge.
Without Hewlett and without Simcoe, Setauket is being run by Capt.
It’s a much chiller place to be at the beginning of the season.
Does he team up with anybody this season or is he kind of a rogue?
So we put our two biggest villains together not that they work extremely well together.
Which female characters play essential roles this season?
Mary and Anna each go on different arcs that intertwine with each other.
But he knew if he kicked them out completely, then a lot of his soldiers would desert.
It also connects Washington with espionage.
And Abigail gets pulled back into intrigue.
Abigail is such an interesting character to me because she represents the Africa-American war experience, which is complicated.
The British are guaranteeing their freedom.
So this is a fraught situation, and it builds to a head at the end of the war.
And into all this mix returns Akinbode.
Her son Cicero has a much more impactful role this season as well.
Lafayette is a key part of Yorktown, and Hamilton as well.
Another new face is Rochambeau.
Do we empathize for Arnold at this point, or is he now an unvarnished villain?
I think it’s up to the viewer.
We don’t tilt him terribly one way or the other.
We just play to the truth.
We don’t say that he wasn’t a great battlefield commander.
He is and we actually prove that again.
There’s a very interesting piece where he sees the vulnerability of Yorktown and warns Cornwallis about it.
And they ignore him, just like the Continentals did.
He gets no respect.
He’s like the Rodney Dangerfield of the Revolutionary War.
Those are things that bring him down, and bring him into a kind of quiet downfall.
He doesn’t meet a bloody end; he meets an infamous end.
