Echoes’ Boss on Keeley Hawes’ Surprising New Role & Bringing in Original Series Characters

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the Orphan Black: Echoes series premiere “Pilot.”]

The world of Orphan Black expands with the new series Echoes starring Krysten Ritter, and the premiere includes a major reveal that connects back to the original series.

The episode begins with Ritter’s character, disoriented as she wakes up to a scientist played by Keeley Hawes. She can’t remember anything and eventually escapes the room, finding a lab with computer-printed body parts. “You were created. You were printed from a high-resolution scan using a very complex process,” Hawes’ scientist tells her. “It’s a new technology. It’s the fourth-dimensional printing of human tissue.” It’s not until the end of the episode that the scientist’s identity is revealed when she calls her Aunt Cosima (!) and tells her, “I think I may have done something terrible.” Yes, Hawes is playing the adult version of Sarah Manning’s (Tatiana Maslany) daughter, Kira, from the original Orphan Black.

“We wanted to have a clear connection to the original show because we wanted them to be in the same universe, but obviously we also wanted to create something that a new audience who’d never seen Orphan Black before could enter the world without needing too much backstory or any backstory at all. We wanted to be able to start fresh in a lot of ways. Kira was obviously at the center of a lot of the drama and action in the original, but it was really interesting to think about what she would be like as an adult and in the interim time between the end of the old show and the beginning of the new show, what choices she would’ve made,” showrunner Anna Fishko tells TV Insider.

“We talked a lot about how she might’ve distanced herself from her mother, that they might’ve had kind of a problematic relationship, but that she still might have been close to her Aunt Cosima, who was a scientist, and sort of been inspired by her to get into science, done very, very well in school, and pursued this degree in bioengineering and become this expert in tissue printing, which is a real science,” she continues. “And we really liked the idea that she, in a lot of ways, had taken on this mission to really do good in the world, and so the foundation that she starts is entirely a nonprofit that’s designed to provide organs for people who need organ donation, which is a real problem in the world, and she’s really solved this kind of global problem and is having a really positive impact.” But that doesn’t mean she’s not also in “a moral gray area” when it comes to Ritter’s character.

So does this mean that other original series characters will be showing up? A couple more will, reveals Fishko. “They were people who were important to Kira in her life, and it was really fun and great to bring them back,” she says. “It was a pleasure to work with them. They were so happy to come back. It was so interesting to spend time with them and talk about the original show. And so I think we’ll use them if it feels like it works for the story.”

As for what happens in the rest of the premiere, most of it takes place in 2052, two years after that exchange in the lab. After she escapes, Ritter’s character is calling herself Lucy, but trouble comes calling and disrupts her life with her boyfriend, Jack (Avan Jogia), and his daughter, Charlie (Zariella Langford), after she’s hit by a car and ends up in the hospital. She’s fine, and while the doctor tells her nothing seems different on her scans, they do lead to Kira getting a call that she was found—and then a man going searching for her, claiming to be her brother. When he finds Lucy, he checks a tattoo on her arm with a UV light, and their fight spills out from her trailer into the field, where Charlie is the one to shoot him to save Lucy.

Sophie Giraud / AMC

Lucy immediately packs everyone’s bags and insists Jack and Charlie stay with his army friend, Tina (Eva Everett Irving), only telling her boyfriend that she had a different life before meeting him and has to face these people to get them to back off for good. Lucy begins her search, going to the sober living community where she once stayed after spending time on the street, and checks the GPS data on the phone of the man who attacked her. Meanwhile, Tom (Reed Diamond) thinks Lucy killed the man and sees it as her having some kind of “flaw,” making her a problem. Kira argues she’s a person, but Tom says that if there’s something wrong with her, bringing her in alive may not be an option. Kira reminds him it’s not his decision.

Lucy goes to the address where the man started his drive from and sees a teen (Amanda Fix‘s Jules) she recognizes from a reflection in the mirror in flashes she’s been having—and who has the same scar on her arm that she does. The girl runs, but Lucy catches up to her and takes her hostage when they’re followed by a woman, who calls it in.

What did you think of the Orphan Black: Echoes premiere and that Kira reveal? Let us know in the comments section, below.

Orphan Black: Echoes, Sundays, 10/9c, AMC