Blake Ritson Breaks Down Brainiac's Biggest Move Yet on 'Krypton'

Spoilers ahead for tonight's episode of Krypton, titled "The Word of Rao."

Tonight on Krypton, Brainiac made his biggest move yet, assimilating the Voice of Rao, Kandor City's theocratic head of state. The quick, violent takeover makes Brainiac the de facto leader of the city, and presumably puts Seg in significant danger not just of being collected, but of being killed if Brainiac were to learn that he is in fact Superman's grandfather.

Beyond that, though, it has huge implications for the show as a whole, as it now shows exactly how Brainiac got actor Blake Ritson's face (it was seen on the Voice, as he was being attacked by a Brainiac sentry), and suggests that even if the Brainiac seen in promotional materials is defeated, it might not mean his larger threat is gone by the end of the season.

Ritson joined ComicBook.com to discuss the show's biggest twist yet, and where his characters go from here.

Hey, wait! We got to see your face without makeup or an enormous gold helmet there!

I always knew the trajectory of the characters I would be playing this season.

When David Goyer first came to me, he laid out: "How would you like to play the big bad, Brainiac?"

He said, "Listen I've got this crazy idea; It's kind of the Darth Vader in some ways of the series as well but then he kind of morphs into another character."

So in a way I'm kind of playing three characters. How I think that it's basically Brainiac, the voice of Rao -- and the voice of Rao, once infected, is a very different creature indeed.

As an actor to have the choice and the option of playing three, three different characters is a, you know, just incredibly fun. It was a very different adventure everyday on set.

With all of the different takes on Brainiac throughout the years, did it help you narrow your kind of focus a little bit once you got to the point where you knew "which" one was in play, so you could read those stories first?

Oh, for sure. I mean, I knew very early on that we were kind of the Geoff Johns/Gary Frank Brainiac was going to be the most influential, but I didn't narrow my research just because I thought you might, in diving in, be able to pull out a tiny detail [to inform the performance].

I know there's such a kind of rich fan base who really know their lore, and they know and love the DC Universe, and I thought if there's any part of other versions I could just extract and bring in, it would just add a little nuance and details.

I enjoy the research apart of everything else I just, I got very into reading the comics and I think, just researching that character with such a deep iconic presence, you kind of feel it's your responsibility and you just want it spot on first time it's being brought to screen in this particular incarnation. DC was very kind enough to deliver huge piles of homework for me to sift through so again it would have felt a miss not to have used it.

Were you under the Voice of Rao's helmet the whole time, or were you just doing the voice?

I was! Occasionally, we would be shooting two units at once and if there was ever a long shot where you were seeing him static, not moving or anything, occasionally we used a double. Anytime there's movement, anytime there's speech, anytime there's any real action that's pretty much me under the mask.

I think that's basically the most beautifully constructed costume; it's an extraordinary piece of design. I remember seeing the sketches and thinking they really created something very iconic. Then you step into it, you go, "Oh wow."

There's certain practical considerations that you need to sidestep daily. It's very difficult to appear very dignified ascending that flight of stairs in that costume for example. It's a wonderful costume but it was also very white. It's very unforgiving. It stains. So I became in credibly diligent of anyone eating spaghetti bolognese within a two meter radius.

There wasn't a spare costume. You couldn't wash it. The helmet was extraordinary and somewhat restrictive. You have very little vision, which turns into a sauna when it steams up. Before shooting, I had to pace around and do the blocking as if I was blindfolded, which effectively I was. I had to kind of negotiate intergalactic hanging baskets and floating symbols and yeah, the costume department had to divine ingenious ways of keeping me breathing because again the airflow was virtually nonexistent. I had a tiny pump attached to my leg, which fed into a plastic tube, which fed up. It was extraordinary. The whole thing was an extraordinary piece of work.

One of the things I did when I was on set, I actually took, hen we were backstage doing wardrobe, I took some close-up photos of the gown. Did they tell you what it is that you're wearing all over you?

I think it's actually, it's the outline of season two, translated into Kryptonian! If you find out you tell me. I'd be fascinated. I did ask; people were very evasive.

I know that the prayer leaves that are hanging in your chambers...I can't remember exactly what the expression is but there's one expression that's repeated in almost all of those prayer leaves and it's very simple. It's something like "Hail Rao."

I still think, generally in the design team, the level of detail was pretty astonishing. Anytime you dove into something or you tried to analyze it, there was an absolute sense and logic to all of it. It's very satisfying to be in one of those shows where there's a real care and passion for what we're producing and creating.

Did you have a favorite version of Brainiac to play, in terms of the worm-like version on the ship or the more armored supervillain version?

I like them both.

In a way they're both the same character. It's just, within his ship he's a slightly different entity than without it. I enjoyed being in the armor just because as an actor, you have a kind of greater physicality. When you're on the ship. It's largely motion capture.

Interacting with actors is obviously much more fun. I think there's some really fun, juicy scenes coming up with some of the cast members so, truly from performance point-of-view, I really enjoyed those.

The voice of Rao, who has just been infected by the end of episode four, is about to go on a pretty epic journey for the rest of the season. He's very much locked and loaded to start trailing bodies and chaos wherever he goes. I think it was a lot of fun playing that character as well which I think really excited a lot of fans to see where that story goes.

Do you think somebody like Adam Strange, who has knowledge of Earth and the future, should be watching his back here?

I think Brainiac is an infinitely inquisitive being. I think anyone who possesses any knowledge of any kind is potentially threatened by Brainiac because I don't think he's discriminating I think he will adopt the knowledge of anyone and anything which crosses his path -- so yes, absolutely anyone who has an alien knowledge which he hasn't yet encountered, or knows of an alien technology is absolutely a prime target of Brainiac.

That's in a way one of the things that makes him such an interesting supervillain. The thing about him is that there's no malice behind what he does. It's a pure curiosity. It's a pure acquisitive intellectual drive which he's pursuing so there's nothing malevolent about targeting any specific individual. Anyone and everything is a target, which is also what makes his all encompassing grasp on the universe, universally terrifying.

What does the kind of power that the Voice holds mean in the hands of Brainiac for the shorter term?

He is the highest authority in Kandor he is the de facto leader. I think there's something fun as having already seen in episode three when the parasite appropriated the body of Rhom.

Kind of what the process would involve, in terms of consuming her humanity and giving her an array of extraordinary abilities of super-intelligence and super-strength and telekinesis. We've seen the devastation a random citizen in the rankless district could cause, so you can kind of imagine the gravity of it when the Voice of Rao becomes infected.

He's already the most powerful individual in Kandor. He has the power of life and death. He controls day and night and the climate within the bio-dome surrounding Kandor. So now, armed with his catalog of superhuman abilities and rather selfish intent...I think there's a lot of fun at the last part of the series, which will be dove into.

Do you think there's kind of an interesting inherent conflict built into Brainiac possessing the voice of Rao? Thus far what we've seen from the voice of Rao is that he is the embodiment of a very, very limited worldview that doesn't accept outside influences and it doesn't really have much in the way of intellectual curiosity. Brainiac is kind of the opposite of that.

Yeah. In a way, the Voice from the moment of possession...his humanity is appropriated and he is quite essentially Brainiac. He is essentially a vessel harvesting knowledge about Kandor, its weaknesses, its society, its culture, its religion, its social and political workings.

In a way, the individual is less interesting to Brainiac. He's looking at a far larger picture. He simply wants someone who grants him access to all the information on all the technology and how this culture has evolved. In a way the individual at this point has already been subsumed from the moment the technology infected him. Although, as you say, I'm sure he finds his philosophy entirely tiresome and reductive.

Do you think the closed-minded theocracy and denial of evidence of aliens makes Krypton a kind of ideal target for Brainiac at this moment in its history?

Absolutely. I mean I think actually Brainiac's purely driven with Krypton by the sense that this is an incredibly advanced technology that this culture has incredible gifts that he could plunder.

I think in actual fact, that they can't galvanize their forces to resist him is less interesting because bluntly, no one can resist Brainiac. No one has resisted Brainiac. I think his techniques for disarming planets are so complete and so fully fledged that he doesn't even consider planets a threat; it's purely what does he want next?

It's a pure hunger that's driving him. There's not no spirit of self-preservation, because he does have a deity-like power that he wields, to which the planets are like infants that they don't really present any huge threat to him.

When you come to a character like this, is there a challenge in terms of trying to put your own personal stamp or spin on it without, you know, varying to far from the cannon or alienating people because one would think that as an actor, you do want to make your version kind of distinct in a way that isn't just chalked up to the writers doing it differently.

I think you're absolutely right. I feel very fortunate in that the whole production has been incredibly collaborative and that starts with the showrunner and the writers and the fact that we're quite involved in a creative capacity. We can put ideas into the pot, we can talk about scenes, things involved, and put our stamp upon them as actors.

Even from a design point of view, when you have fittings, when you have costume ideas, when you have alien objects that you have to interact with, the actors have quite a lot of input into that. It is a very collaborative process. There's no sense of you simply being inserted into a slot and kind of trundling off on a conveyor belt. I really enjoyed the creative aspect of this show.

You absolutely want to honor the character as it is, especially Brainiac who is so well known and this is the first time this particular iteration has been brought to screen, but you want to bring something individual to it and idiosyncratic and unique and I think that has been a fun part of the show.

You can hear a clip from the interview in the latest episode of the Panel Discussions podcast below.