Showrunners Mark L. Smith and Elle Smith want to make Eric Bana’s ISB Agent Kyle Turner “very uncomfortable.”
It’s official: Fresh off of its formidable debut in the Netflix Top 10, UNTAMED is coming back for another season.
“I am absolutely thrilled that we get the chance to bring another season of UNTAMED to life,” star Eric Bana said in a statement. “The response to Season 1 has been a testament to the incredible effort by our crew to deliver something truly unique. I can’t wait to take Kyle on his next journey. Massive thanks to Netflix, John Wells Productions, Warner Bros. Television and our fans.”
Bana will return as Kyle Turner, Investigative Services Branch agent of the National Parks Service — and in Season 2 of the series, co-created by Mark L. Smith and Elle Smith, the grizzled park veteran will be investigating a whole new mystery.
“Elle and I envisioned it as a stand-alone, six episodes,” Mark L. Smith tells Tudum of the first season. “But then the more that we got into it, it was just such a great cast … it was just like, ‘Oh yeah, how do we keep this going?’ ”
The answer comes at the end of Season 1. Having solved one of the most devastating cases of his career, Turner finally leavesYosemite National Park and hits the road. It’s a moment of catharsis for the character as he lets go of the years of emotional baggage he’s stored in the park’s wilderness.
Kyle’s exodus is also a realistic narrative turn for the series; real-life ISB agents routinely travel from park to park. In fact, Turner will have made his way to quite a few between seasons before landing at his Season 2 destination. “This won’t be the first park he’s been in since Yosemite,” Mark says. “He’s been to a lot of parks. He’s been busy, taking on a lot of cases. This will be the latest and it’ll be more impactful for him.”
The new season of UNTAMED will showcase a park as distinct from Yosemite as possible. “We’ve done Yosemite. What’s the next park that could feel different from that?” Elle tells Tudum. “Each national park has such a different cultural identity, geographical identity. Being able to explore those places through the case and through Turner’s journey is what’s so fascinating.”
The mystery, too, will change with the locale. “We can make the case organic to a different kind of park, a different kind of landscape, [and] not have someone just fall off another mountain,” Mark adds.
“Our theme has been that this park is our main character, this park is sort of alive,” Elle says. “We do want to maintain that thread. Whichever park we choose will be a character and it will kind of play a role in Turner’s emotional frame of mind.”
Most importantly, the shift in scenery means Turner will be far less at home in the wilderness. In Season 2, he takes on a role more similar to his rookie sidekick Naya Vasquez (Lily Santiago) in Season 1.
“Turner was so comfortable in Yosemite,” Mark says. “He was the one leading this charge, and people followed him. And now, [we’re] putting Kyle on his back foot, making him very uncomfortable … This time we get to follow Turner into a park and let him lead us, and we stumble along with him as he’s kind of finding his way.”
Turner will be getting to know the new park while simultaneously encountering its inhabitants. “We’re going to make sure we populate it with characters that are interesting and help him in ways both good and bad,” Mark says.
Does that mean we might see a few of Turner’s colleagues from Yosemite make a return appearance? Maybe. “We’re trying to figure that stuff out because my God, we loved our cast and we loved the characters that they brought to life,” Mark teases. “In an ideal world, we would be able to pull something off.”
While you wait for more news about UNTAMED, make sure you check out Netflix’s expanding lineup of similar series that highlight unique Americana characters and locations, including popular shows like Virgin River, The Lincoln Lawyer, Ransom Canyon, and The Waterfront.
