‘Orphan Black: Echoes’ Connects Krysten Ritter to the Clone Club via One Key Character
Can you make a completely unique copy of an iconic original show?
Orphan Black: Echoes—a spinoff of the original Orphan Black series—is coming. Marketing itself as a “completely unique copy of the original,” the show will follow new characters years after the original series and show how the world has (and hasn’t) handled cloning technology. Here’s everything we know about Orphan Black: Echoes thus far.
When can I watch Orphan Black: Echoes?
The show is slated for release on June 23, 2024. It was originally scheduled for a March 2023 release to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the original series but the premiere was delayed. The show will be released on BBC America, AMC, & AMC+.
Is there a trailer?
AMC recently released the first full trailer for Orphan Black: Echoes, giving us a deeper insight into how the show is going to deal with the themes and moral dilemmas that the original Orphan Black navigated so compellingly.
Not only do we know that Krysten Ritter’s Lucy is a clone somehow tied up in some new scientific project going on, but there’s also a younger version of her involved. This trailer introduces us to a teenage girl named Jules (Amanda Fix). Lucy bumps into her in the street and stops her because she looks really familiar. After noticing what’s seemingly a familiar scar on Jules’ arm, Lucy says “I think she’s me.” It seems the two of them are going to end up working together to get to the bottom of whatever secret science they’ve both unknowingly been signed up for.
Meanwhile, we also get a bigger glimpse of the science side of things. Someone named Paul Darros (James Hiroyuki Liao) is making a speech about how whatever he’s working on “is going to change the world.” You know, how arrogant TV scientists do. His colleague, played by Keeley Hawes (It’s a Sin), has misgivings, saying “I think she’s in danger.”
Darros’ nonchalant response? “Sometimes we have to make sacrifices for the greater good.”
The previously-released teaser trailer is below:
You can also watch the first few minutes of the first episode here:
The connection to Orphan Black, and what that tells us
While Hawes’ character is unnamed in any of these trailers, a quick glance at the show’s IMDb page lists the actress as playing “Kira Manning,” which is a name that Orphan Black fans should instantly recognize.
Kira Manning is Sarah Manning’s daughter. In the original Orphan Black, Sarah Manning (Tatiana Maslany) was the main clone we followed as we navigated the show’s strange world. When the show opens, she’d left her young daughter, Kira (Skyler Wexler) in the care of her foster mother, whom she referred to as Mrs. S (Maria Doyle Kennedy) while she went off to be a wild child. When she returns for her daughter, however, Mrs. S refuses, believing that Sarah regaining charge of Kira without getting her life together would not be in the girl’s best interest.
The entire series is partially about Sarah building her relationship with Kira, even as it’s discovered that there’s more to Kira than meets the eye. She’s the only child of a Project Leda clone (most of Clone Club is infertile), which makes her (and her DNA) a target for the Dyad Institute. After much drama and intrigue, Kira ends the series reunited with Sarah and her uncle Felix (Jordan Gavaris).
In the spinoff audio drama, Orphan Black: The Next Chapter, narrated by and starring Maslany and the original cast, Kira is a teenager and still at odds with her mother. According to the Orphan Black wiki, Kira and Sarah are still working on their relationship and Sarah has (understandably) become extremely overprotective and forcing her to be homeschooled, which prompts Kira to do a lot behind her back, including applying for and getting an internship at a science non-profit called GeneKeep:
“If she had any chance of getting into a top college after being forced to school herself via correspondence her last year of high school, she was going to need something spectacular on her application. An IT internship at a genetics-focused nonprofit might as well be an invite with her name on it. There was a lot she could learn here about herself, too, without revealing why she was interested and without putting herself in danger of becoming a lab rat again.”
Orphan Black: The Next Chapter
Now, it seems that Kira is all grown up and doing science in Orphan Black: Echoes. But what kind of science? How exactly is she involved in Lucy’s life? What are her conflicts about? And why would she be involved in the kind of science that upended her mother’s life and her own?
Who stars in the series?
Krysten Ritter plays the protagonist, Lucy, “a woman with an unimaginable origin story, trying to find her place in the world.” Ritter is best known for Don’t Trust the B in Apartment 23, Jessica Jones, and Breaking Bad. And while Ritter is listed as “Lucy”, you can bet there will be plenty more clones where she came from.
Keeley Hawes has been cast as Kira Manning, with Amanda Fix (North of Normal) as Jules, Avan Jogia (Zombieland: Double Tap) as Jack, Rya Kihlstedt (Superman & Lois) as Eleanor Miller, and James Hiroyuki Liao (Barry) as Paul Darros.
What is Echoes about?
The official plot synopsis reads:
“Set in the near future, Orphan Black: Echoes takes a deep dive into the exploration of the scientific manipulation of human existence. It follows a group of women as they weave their way into each other’s lives and embark on a thrilling journey, unraveling the mystery of their identity and uncovering a wrenching story of love and betrayal.”
What else?
Anna Fishko (Pieces of Her, The Society, Fear the Walking Dead) is the series showrunner and executive producer. She and Ritter are both executive producers for the series, alongside John Fawcett, Kerry Appleyard, David Fortier, and Ivan Schneeberg, all of whom worked on the original Orphan Black. Nick Nantell and Katie O’Connell are also credited as EPs.
The show writers include Julian Camillieri, Alex Delyle, Anayat Fakhraie, Amy Louise Johnson, C. Quintana, and Sharyn Rothstein.
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