American Gods' first season made major changes to Neil Gaiman's original book, with Laura Moon (Emily Browning) handed a fascinating new backstory and key characters coming together in ways radically different to the source material.
But how will that affect season two, and the future of the show?
"I feel that now the show is really becoming its own thing it's evolving into a different organism," Ricky Whittle (Shadow Moon) told Digital Spy.
"There's certain threads on the show, that I call 'the Marty McFly timeline' – Sweeney and Laura never meet in the book. And now that they're tight [on TV], there's certain things in the book that can't happen."
Though Gaiman has said that his original book offers up enough material for at least five seasons of television, Whittle suggested: "There's so many different kinds of directions that the show can go in.
"We can even bring in [Gaiman's 2005 book] Anansi Boys and [2007's] The Monarch of the Glen and all these other spin-off stories that Neil writes, and the eventual sequel [to American Gods].
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"It really can go anywhere, which is exciting. We might not necessarily finish at the book, or maybe the book will finish early and we'll evolve into something else. Neil's involved in the whole thing, so if they decide to completely drift away from the book that could happen too. It's exciting to see what comes up."
As Whittle points out, Mad Sweeney and Laura Moon's relationship is one of the biggest changes from book to show, so how will that continue to evolve in season two?
"We were together for a lot of season one," Browning said. "And it was mostly a purely antagonistic relationship. And it was important for Pablo [Schreiber] and I to have a little bit of evolution.
"It's really fun for us to beat each other up, and be horrible to each other – I know it's fun for people to watch – but I think we needed to move past that to a degree. I mean, there still is a lot of that! But there's a symbiosis, they work together well as a team – even if they're not really willing to admit it."
American Gods season 2 returns to Prime Video on Monday, March 11, with new episodes coming to the service weekly.
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Sam is an entertainment writer with NCTJ accreditation and a twenty-year career as a film journalist.
Starting out as a staff writer at Total Film, moving up to Deputy Online Editor, Sam was responsible for Total Film’s YouTube channel, where he revolutionised the magazine’s approach to video junkets, creating influential formats that spread to other outlets.
He’s interviewed a wide range of film icons, including directors such as David Lynch, Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, Sofia Coppola, Ridley Scott, Michael Bay and Sam Raimi, as well as actors such as Meryl Streep, Nic Cage, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Anne Hathaway, Margot Robbie, Natalie Portman, Kermit the Frog, all of the Avengers and many more.
Sam has also interviewed several comic creators, including Stan Lee, Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, and he has a zombie cameo in The Walking Dead comic.
In 2014, Sam went freelance, working directly for film studios including Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox and Disney, as well as covering red carpet events for film marketing company PMA Productions.
Sam is the co-host, producer and editor of the Arrow Video podcast, which has seen year-on-year growth since its creation in 2017, gaining over half a million listens in that time.
His byline has appeared in outlets such as Yahoo, MTV, Dazed, Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, Elle, and Good Housekeeping among others.
In 2012, Sam made it to the final of the Leicester Square Theatre New Comedian of the Year competition, and went on to become a filmmaker himself, directing three features that have all played major festivals, and secured distribution – starring in two of them.
Jim Carrey once mistook Sam for Johnny Cash, and John Carpenter told him to ‘Keep up the good work.’ He promises to try his best.
