Premium cable channel Epix will air the season two premiere of their Batman prequel series Pennyworth in December, as reported by SyFy Wire. On November 10, IGN uploaded the official one-minute trailer to their YouTube channel. The promotional clip features the inaugural appearance of a character who is new to Pennyworth, but not altogether unknown to those familiar with the Batman universe. Around the thirty-two second mark, viewers get their first peek at future Wayne Enterprises CEO Lucius Fox, here played by Simon Manyonda (Neil Gaiman’s Likely Stories, The Bay).
During a remote New York Comic-Con panel in October, Pennyworth creator Bruno Heller (The Mentalist, Gotham) revealed that the young Fox does not initially aid the forces of good: “When we first meet him he’s working for the bad guys, and we will wonder where the hell his allegiances lie, or how this character can become a good guy, but we will discover.”
Even though their presences are not highlighted in the trailer, SyFy Wire reports that a variety of new faces aside from Manyonda’s will crop up over the course of the second season. The roster of new performers includes James Purefoy (The Following, El Candidato), Jessye Romeo (Curfew, Lucky Man), Edward Hogg (Anonymous, Taboo) and Jessica De Gouw (Underground, Riot). Purefoy was a principal cast member on Rome, a historical drama developed in part by Heller. Additionally, in 2015, both Hogg and Ramon Tikaram, who is set to return as Pennyworth‘s Detective Inspector Victor Aziz, played supporting roles in the Wachowski sisters’ space opera Jupiter Ascending. The film’s casting assistant Laura Windows worked as a casting associate on the first season of Pennyworth.
At a DC Fan Dome panel in September, Heller had comic book fans wondering about how Pennyworth might fit into the accepted Batman chronology once he revealed that a major event in season two is the pregnancy of one Martha Wayne, according to SyFy Wire. He discussed his own perspective on the flexibility of canonization during the Comic-Con panel: “Canons are not written down. They’re in the minds of the larger Batman audience, and you’re in the canon if people accept you into the canon… The aim and the ambition for anyone working in this world is to make it into the canon, but you can’t say you are. You get to join the club by popular acclimation. I hope that we will be in the canon.”
The season two premiere of Pennyworth airs on December 13 at 9 P.M. EST on Epix. You can catch up on the first season courtesy of the Epix app, with a subscription rate of $5.99 a month.