Yahoo News Humans creators say "nobody is safe" in coming episodes
Warning: This article contains spoilers for Humans series 3, episode 6
Alas, Agnes. Humans' tragic 'villain' (played by Holly Earl) blew herself up in the name of Synth rights in an episode of Channel 4's scintillating sci-fi that was quite literally explosive.
Elsewhere this week, Stanley (Dino Fetscher) was exposed as Anatole's stooge, Niska made a new friend (of sorts) and Laura (Katherine Parkinson) was forced to make an impossible choice.
Oh, and Mattie (Lucy Carless) is pregnant with her and Leo's child. No biggie.
Digital Spy caught up with Humans creators Sam Vincent and Jonathan Brackley for an exclusive deep dive into the frenetic and game-changing series three, episode six (written by Daisy Coulam, and directed by Ben A Williams).
Related: On the set of Humans season 3: Gemma Chan, Colin Morgan and cast on the show's biggest conflict yet
First of all, can you assure us that nothing bad is going to happen to Sam (Billy Jenkins)?
JON: We don't reassure anyone. We want everyone on tenterhooks at all times!
We find out in this episode that Mattie is pregnant. What was the thinking behind going down that route with the character?
JON: Well, it's tying her and Leo (Colin Morgan) together, more explicitly. For Leo, part of this human rehabilitation, he's thrown into the ultimate product of humanity, which is: another human. So it's complicating their relationship. It's complicating their feelings, for both of them.
SAM: Yes. I would also say that Mattie is very much a teenager. She's grown up, and Lucy Carless is really taking her on this journey of maturation, but we still felt, with something like that, it's so fraught with questions about the rest of her life and her future.
It's come way out of left-field for Mattie, who is made very vulnerable by that. It would really take things back to an emotional square one, where we remember just how young she is.
And we just wanted to do something extremely human, for her and for Leo as well. And the repercussions of that are very great, and raw.
Mattie and Leo visit the old Elster house, which has now become a museum – do you always have that idea in the back of your mind?
SAM: Yes, we did. We loved the idea that it's almost been turned into a kind of shrine and kept like it was a museum. And also that people had stopped visiting, that it's a world that's semi-forgotten now, which really appealed to us.
Daisy Coulam wrote this script, and Ben A Williams directed it, and they did a fantastic job of bringing that to light. As did the Synth guide, with her love for languages.
JON: That's not ADR, by the way. She was actually speaking all of those languages! She's also a singer-songwriter. She's very talented.
SAM: She's one of the best guest Synths we've ever had, I think I can say. She gives it a wonderfully spooky feel. It really brings that story into sharp relief.
Stanley is exposed by Laura in this episode. When did you come up with the idea to re-stage that famous scene from the first series, with the cocktail stick in the eye?
SAM: Again, most of these things are planned quite early on. Most of that is in the writers' room. We have story conferences with our partners, our producers and the script editor and the other writers, too. We had the idea to come full circle in a way, with a very different result.
But it's nice in a third season... I think you earn the right. as long as you watch that it doesn't tip into self-indulgence, you earn the right to call back and have a little bit of circularity. You've spent this time building this world, so sometimes it's nice to look back – as long as you're looking back with a view to accomplishing something new.
Laura is really put through the wringer by Anatole (Ukweli Roach) in this episode, but ultimately chooses to save a human stranger's life over Sam's. What were you looking to say in that moment?
SAM: We wanted to explore an issue that we see a lot of in our contemporary discourse, which is the insistence of ideological perfection, and how easy it is to divide oneself from even the closest ally, if you just differ slightly on the points of interpretation on some kind of ideological issue.
So we thought it would be interesting for Anatole to be the one who is insisting on ideological purity by supposedly proving that Laura still sees the Synths as slightly below humanity, and actually that gets under Laura's skin. As we see, it works. He intends to sow doubt between the Synths and their closest human allies, and it works.
I think the reason she chooses Sam [to die] is because, on some level, when it comes down to it, a human's life, for whatever reason, is probably still worth more to Laura than a Synth's. We thought that was a very provocative and challenging and difficult idea. You could be the closest ally of somebody, and yet still, when it comes down to the crunch, you pick your own kind above them. And she does that.
The confronting of that, and admitting that... does that preclude you from being an ally? Does that preclude you from doing good work and doing something valuable to make the world a better place? We don't think it does, necessarily, but it is certainly something very provocative and interesting [to examine].
Niska is back after last week's absence and is now on the right path to find the Synth who sleeps. How much can you say at this stage about the new character Paul (Philip Barantini) and his motivations?
JON: Obviously we don't want to give anything away. I think the audience are probably feeling what Niska is feeling. Can she trust this person? Should she trust this person?
She's been set on a slightly odd journey by forces unknown. Is part of that journey trusting him? Is that a good idea? Is that a good decision on her part?
SAM: As for whether she's right to trust Paul, that remains to be seen. Certainly in episode seven, Niska delivers, to Paul, my favourite line of dialogue of the series!
You've already killed off Karen this series, now Agnes is gone and various other characters are placed in serious peril this week. Is there any character you consider so inherent to Humans that you would never consider killing them off?
SAM: Our philosophy on that is that nobody is safe, nor have they ever been, nor will they ever be. As soon as you decide that somebody is too important to kill off, then your story has got less room, because you've got an artificial imposition from above.
We always try to stay in the world of the story. Sometimes, you don't want to lose this particular actor, because they're brilliant, but you find that the story demands that you do it. You create a world, and you've got to remain truthful to it.
I don't see anything changing that. because as soon as you do, it becomes artificial, it becomes less real – of course, this is about robots, so that's why it's doubly important to bend over backwards to make it as real as you possibly can!
So nobody is safe. We would never put that restriction on our story.
Humans continues next Thursday (June 28) at 9pm on Channel 4.
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