[Warning: The following post contains MAJOR spoilers for Murder in a Small Town‘s Season 1 finale, “Sleep While I Sing.”]
The season finale of Murder in a Small Town ramped up the kill count by dozens as a serial killer took over town with his very twisted MO: posing and then painting the victims as morbid renaissance-style portraits. The person responsible for potentially dozens of untimely demises? Why, it’s Tommy Cummins, the unassuming art teacher played by Schitt’s Creek star Noah Reid.
Executive producer Jeff Wachtel told TV Insider that after they were able to nab James Cromwell for the pilot (taking over a role once intended for Donald Sutherland), the creatives shot for the stars with their guest star wish list, recruiting the likes of Stana Katic, Devon Sawa, and more. What made Reid so right for this nefarious role — the first and only mass murderer of the season — was his well-earned wholesome beau reputation.
“Ian [Weir, creator] wrote this two-parter. There’s a serial killer, and he’s a high school teacher, and we just sat around and did the fun part, which is, ‘Who’s the nicest guy in the world and the least likely to be a serial killer?’” Wachtel said. “And we were just kind of noodling with, ‘Well, Dan’s boyfriend and husband in Schitt’s Creek is, like, the nicest man on the planet. That’ll be fun.’”
This particular serial killer had a unique resonance with series hero Karl Alberg (Rossif Sutherland). As Wachtel explained, it plays upon “Alberg’s past and the dimension of damaged, maybe mentally unstable mom, a single parent who’s an artist, who would bring him up to this small town as a retreat, and who had a tragic ending, which we don’t know much about yet, but left a body of work and also infused her child with a love of art. So while he’s not a world-class professional artist, he has some talent and he does love it. And then we say, ‘Okay, that’s a great backstory. How do we bring it front and center?’ And so it’s a gimmick, but to the extent that he has his superpower, it’s related to viewing the world compositionally… we weren’t afraid to talk up to the audience.”
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Fans can expect to find out a whole lot more about Alberg’s past if and when the show is renewed for Season 2. “Second season, we’re gonna have the opportunity to go deeper. The situation with Karl’s mom and his dad, Holly starts to ask, ‘Well, what’s up with Dad?’ quite early. They’re at an auction… and one of mom’s paintings [is for sale]. So yes, we’re going to do that,” Wachtel confirmed.
As for what else is ahead in Season 2? The producers also expect to delve into the past of Cassandra (Kristin Kreuk) and explore the mindsets of the supporting players like Sid (Aaron Douglas) and his bustling family, Isabella (Savonna Spracklin) and her career ambition, and Edwina (Mya Lowe) and her professional stature.
More importantly, perhaps, “Alberg’s purview will expand,” Wachtel teased. It’s natural. He’s very competent and ought to get more responsibility. “In the next season, he has a much broader purview, but there’s new staff, there are new people and other ambitions that come up.”
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One thing fans shouldn’t expect a repeat of is a serial killer storyline — although multi-episode arcs are very much in the works. “By the end of the season, we had kind of earned [the serial killer arc], but it’s not a place that I want to go back to a whole lot. There is going to be a season-long mystery in Season 2, which will involve more than one killing. It won’t be episode-specific, but both Karl and Cassandra will be kind of tracking it from different angles,” Wachtel teased. “There is going to be a little bit of a, ‘Wait, this one and this one, which are unsolved over the last 10 years, kind of tie together,’ and it’s a bit of a surprise who the baddie is.”
As for what’s next with the two, now that they’ve kissed and made up in the Season 1 finale? “They’re not married, and they are both carrying some damage… so they definitely get deeper and more committed. She’s running for councilwoman. I don’t want to do spoiler alerts about that, but if she were to win that election, that might put her professionally at odds with her boyfriend. We’re going to introduce a new character who’s a bit of an antagonist, who’s a mayor in the town, who’s a bit of a stir-upper of things,” Wachtel previewed. “So they’re both highly opinionated people and very committed to their vision of betterment of the world, which is going to bring them up against each other. But most of the issues I think that we’re going to be looking at in Season 2 are not, ‘Do I love you?’ issues, but more, ‘This is how I see the world.’”
Murder in a Small Town, Streaming, Hulu
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