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LOS ANGELES, Oct. 15 (UPI) -- Questions from fans at San Diego Comic-Con inspired the second season of the TV show The Purge, according to its stars and producers. The Purge series, which includes four movies and the TV series, was created by James DeMonaco.
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"[DeMonaco] said that people have always asked him about the minutiae, how it works and what happens in between," executive producer Krystal Ziv told UPI. "He felt like TV would be the best place to explore that because he had 10 hours."
In The Purge, all crime is legal for one night a year. The Purge's fictional political party, The New Founding Fathers of America, posit that giving Americans the chance to express their violence once a year creates peace during the rest of the year. Roland said DeMonaco wanted to explore how people actually cope.
"What is it really like to live knowing that in the next three months it's going to be a mini Armageddon again?" executive producer Roland said on the same call with Ziv.
Star Derek Luke, who plays Marcus in the series, survives a Purge and spends the ensuing year trying to figure out who tried to kill him and why.
"As the Purges increased every year, he realized that the best thing for him and his family would be to move to a different area," Luke said. "In our story, we find Marcus becoming a target where he spent most of his life trying to get out of harm's way."
Marcus' storyline also is a mystery. The show lets him spend all season pursuing clues to find out who tried to kill him. That's harder to do in a Purge movie confined to 12 hours of Purge night.
"We have different episodes where we can explore different facets of his life," Ziv said. "We can spend one at work with him, one on his previous marriage and who he used to be, some with his current marriage. So we could really dole out the different people around him throughout the season."
As Marcus unravels those clues, he spirals emotionally, too, Luke said.
"We come to find out that there's suspicion of how there was a malfunction in his alarm system," Luke said. "There could be only a few answers. So one of the spirals is that he begins to look internally from work into home. It's very interesting what he finds out."
Exploring Marcus' emotional spiral is another way The Purge series distinguishes itself from the movies.
"[The show] allows you to get more personal as opposed to we've got to wrap this up in 90 minutes," Roland said. "It really allows you to turn it into kind of like a character study on who he is, who he thought he is and how maybe he's not what he thought."
The 10 episodes of Season 2 will encompass the days in between Purges. It will also flash back to previous Purges.
"Those flashbacks are kind of cool because they all take place or directly connect to a Purge night passed," Roland said. "So it's another cool way in a season that takes place in between Purges to get some cool Purge texture and violence midseason."
Violence is part and parcel of The Purge, and the 90-minute movies are packed with it. The episodes give equal time to the psychological issues of characters living with The Purge. For example, Marcus survived a Purge but has post-traumatic stress syndrome.
"That's kind of the overarching thing throughout the season," Roland said. "Everybody thinks that they're fine, and you really see people living in this world are not fine. You just can't be."
There is hope for Marcus to reach the next Purge night a stronger person, though.
"He's learned that the only thoughts he can control is not others', but his [own]," Luke said. "There are scenes in The Purge with my character where he's dealing with control."
The annual Purge also spawns holidays, as will be seen in episode four.
"A new holiday that comes two months after Purge [is] Remembrance Day where everybody gets a grief box for people they've lost in The Purge," Ziv said. "It's kind of like the new Memorial Day in that universe. We made a new holiday."
The Purge Season 2 premieres Tuesday at 9 p.m. EDT on USA.
