In the universe of Outcast—from the characters to the very nature of possession—nothing is what it seems. Creator and executive producer Robert Kirkman, showrunner and executive producer Chris Black and star Patrick Fugit reflect on how the series diverges from the standard horror genre model…and what to expect from the Season 1 finale.
First, discover character…
Chris Black distinguishes Outcast from other horror features withby this golden rule: “This is not a horror show with characters, it’s a character show with horror.” Patrick Fugit, who plays the troubled hero Kyle Barnes, has a similar take on the series. As he says, “Typically, the exorcism or the demonic possession is the center of pieces in the exorcism genre,” he says.. “Outcast centers around quite a lot of the human interaction and the human drama, and the stories within all of that.”
Search for a “cure.”
For Robert Kirkman, a big goal was to make Kyle and the Rev. Anderson proactive. In his own words, “The biggest thing to me is that the show treats exorcism like a solvable problem. It’s not a show where Rev. Anderson and Kyle exorcise a person and then go home and wait for the next call.” Kirkman adds:, “They’re trying to figure out what’s going on in this world. They’re examining Anderson’s past cases. They’re active, always trying to get a better understanding of what this phenomenon is, in an effort to stop it once and for all.”
Expect evil to exist in the most unassuming of places.
There’s more to the darkness in Outcast than demons and possession. According to Black, “We hope the show will always be suspenseful and surprising and scary. But the monsters in our world, and the demons in our world, are not always going to come from hell or a supernatural place.”
Know that nothing is what it seems.
Fugit acknowledges that things start out in line with the more classic exorcism narratives, but he warns: “It may feel very familiar at first, but as time goes on I think that both the audience and the characters start to realize that this is not what they thought and that this is a different animal altogether.” Speaking to the same point, Black says, “There’s not just one big twist, but an unfolding series of revelations and surprises about what is going on in this world and beyond this world. What we ultimately reveal is that the place these demons are coming from is really not the place you expect.”