The Order Season 3: Executive Producers “Cautiously Optimistic”

The Order has been a sleeper hit for Netflix, winning over fans with its tale of a secret magical society on the campus of Belgrave University, and season two took things to the next level with the Knights of St. Christopher werewolves reluctantly joining forces with the practitioners against a common enemy. With plenty of surprising guest appearances and relationships that didn’t always go the way fans expected them to, this supernatural series has always banked on the unexpected, and the executive producers and actors got together for a virtual panel during Comic-Con@Home to talk about their process and the prospects for a season 3.

Series creator Dennis Heaton somewhat jokingly admitted that the writing process isn’t always perfectly smooth. “We sort of wrote ourselves into a corner last year, which is kind of the fun of doing a show like this,” he said during the panel. “You just sort of go, ‘Okay, where’s the biggest emotional point we can end that will result in hate mail?’ and then don’t think about it at all until we actually know we’re going to have to work on it. And then we spend the first week in the room staring at a blank wall going, ‘Uhhhhh, crud. What are we going to do?’ And then it all comes from the characters.”

Head writer and show runner Shelley Eriksen agreed that the actors’ performances in The Order season one were very helpful when the staff returned to the writers room. “A lot of what we came up with is because of things that were built in the first season and things we loved seeing our actors do and bring to it,” she said. “That’s the gift of those first few weeks when we come back is we’ve got stuff to build on that we didn’t even know we had when we were writing the series.”

The virtual panel became more festive and speculative when the cast discussed the episode in The Order season 2 when Beverly Hills, 90210 castmates Jason Priestley and Ian Ziering showed up as themselves, portraying celebrity members of the Hermetic Order of the Blue Rose. Moderator and producer Morris Chapdelaine asked the panelists what other dream guests they’d like to see, and Devery Jacobs, who plays Lilith, responded, “At one point, Randall ends up saying Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is rumored to be in the Order, and I’m just like, ‘AOC!’ I’m down for that! I’m ready to see it.”

Katharine Isabelle, who plays Grand Magus Vera Stone, inspired an interesting tangent when she suggested that Academy Award winner Cher should make an appearance as Vera’s mother. Nomadic Pictures co-chief Chad Oakes, who produces both The Order and Syfy’s Van Helsing, mentioned that he knew Cher before looking into his webcam and addressing Cher directly: “Sorry it didn’t work out on Van Helsing, but how about The Order?” Could it be that Cher had been considered for the Dracula role that ended up going to another tall actress, Tricia Helfer?

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Jacobs also took a moment to address the controversy surrounding her character’s shift from being interested in fellow werewolf Randall in The Order season one to having a same-sex relationship with her handler in season two. “In season one, there wasn’t any love interest for Lilith at the beginning half,” she said, noting that at the time, the writers had not yet written the Lilith-Randall scenes. “I had made an executive decision where I was like, ‘Lilith is totally queer…’ There’s even a couple moments where it was like, ‘Oh, I loved Alyssa once — like a sister, you perverts!’ But it was like: was it? Was it really?”

As for the prospects for The Order season 3, Nomadic Pictures hopes to make an announcement soon. “We hope to find out in the next few weeks how we are doing,” said Oakes, “and I know that the fan and the audience response has been incredible. It’s been amazing! So we’re really thankful to everybody out there for watching. The love comes through in all the blogs and the reviews and everything else. So we’re cautiously optimistic, and we hope that we can have some good news soon.”