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'Resident Alien' boss Chris Sheridan breaks down Mayor Ben's emotional arc in Season 2
Mayor Ben Hawthorne and his wife, Kate, have a ways to go in their relationship.
Mayor Ben Hawthorne (Levi Fiehler) and his wife, Kate (Meredith Garretson), have quite a ways to go with regards to their relationship depicted in SYFY's Resident Alien. While the mid-season finale for the show's sophomore outing did feature a rather steamy reconciliation between the two characters, it also explored the destructive nature of Ben's penchant for lying. His decision to withhold the information of D'Arcy (Alice Wetterlund) kissing him, as well as his intentions to build a luxury resort in Patience, came back to haunt him in a major way.
Speaking with Jackie Jennings and Juan Cadavid, co-hosts of the official Resident Alien After-Show, showrunner and executive producer Chris Sheridan explained that Ben's aversion to telling the truth stems from a deeper aversion for conflict. He's been scared of everything his whole life and finds it easier to abstain from telling the truth than risk a fight with someone, his spouse included.
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"In his marriage with Kate, he doesn't like talking about the difficult things and that's their problem," Sheridan said. "I think a lot of couples have this thing where they're not being fully honest with each other. When you're not fully honest, you do go to this place where you lack intimacy and closeness. I think that's what's missing in their relationship. They have a lot of fire in there and a lot of passion in there, but they're not close emotionally as they could be."
"Ben's path for this season is to try to gain some of this strength that he hasn't had his whole life and to try to learn how to tell his truth to Kate and be comfortable with it and be comfortable having her disagree and be comfortable fighting over things if they need to fight," Sheridan later concluded. "Getting over that hump with his wife will help him get into a better place as mayor and being able to go against the grain with the town and really fight for things he believes in that'll help the town. We explore all that in the second half of the season."
Fiehler, who spoke with SYFY WIRE ahead of Season 1, promised that audiences would see Ben "stepping into his own self and power a little bit. You see him grow into the mayor that he should be."
The first half (eight episodes) of Resident Alien Season 2 is now streaming on the SYFY app and Peacock. Be sure to check back in with SYFY WIRE every week for more bonus content that takes us behind the show's sophomore outing!
New episodes of Resident Alien Season 2 are set to land this summer on SYFY.
