George Takei Teases What to Expect in Season 2 of The Terror

The changing landscape of cable television has altered what networks can accomplish, as the changes in censorship protocols allow series to push the envelope in the horrors depicted in genre shows. AMC helped lead the charge thanks to The Walking Dead, with series like Preacher and Fear the Walking Dead cementing the network as a home for boundary-pushing genre stories. Last year, the network delivered the first season of The Terror, depicting sailors who became trapped in the Arctic Circle with no hopes of rescue, with star of the series’ second season, dubbed “The Terror: Infamy,” George Takei revealing what audiences can expect in the new narrative.

“[After] the bombing of Pearl Harbor, all Japanese-Americans were rounded up and incarcerated, with no charges, with no trial [or] due process, which is a central pillar of our justice system,” George Takei shared with Entertainment Weekly. “There is the old Japanese literary form called Kaidan, ghost tales, that is fused onto this experience of Japanese-Americans. The people that were imprisoned were highly stressed, and some marriages broke up, some people went crazy, and they overlaid the story of yureis — spirits — and obake — ghosts that possess people.”

The anthology series is shifting gears from the 19th-century Naval expedition, inspired by Dan Simmons’ novel, to a Japanese internment camp in the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The story has personal significance for Takei, who himself was placed in such a camp as a child.

“U.S. soldiers with bayonets on their rifles knocked on our door, and when my father answered it, we were literally pushed out of our home at gunpoint,” the actor admitted. “My mother was born in Sacramento, my father was a San Franciscan, and my brother and sister and I were born in Los Angeles. Yet, we had these faces. Simply because we looked like the people that bombed Pearl Harbor, we were put into these barbed wire prison camps for the duration of the war.”

The first season of the series dealt with both a monstrous antagonist but also the darkness that lies within the hearts of men who are pushed to their limits, with Takei feeling as though this upcoming season has direct reflections to our current political climate.

“Absolutely it does,” Takei responded when discussing modern-day parallels of the story. “When Donald Trump made that statement, ‘We’re going to have a ban on Muslims coming into this country,’ I mean that’s the same thing that happened with us.”

Tune in to The Terror: Infamy when it debuts on August 12th on AMC.

Are you looking forward to checking out the new season? Let us know in the comments below or hit up @TheWolfman on Twitter to talk all things horror and Star Wars!