A new fight for the future begins in exclusive key art from Snowpiercer Season 2 on TNT

Snowpiercer wrapped up its first season back in July with powerful endings and intriguing new beginnings, setting the stage for a blockbuster second season that's been in the works since before the first season premiered. It's a time of fresh upheaval on the train, as new adversaries and new struggles threaten to bring everything the passengers worked for in Season 1 crashing down. Is a new regime on the horizon? We'll have to wait until January to find out, but today we got another peek at what's to come in the form of an exclusive first look at Season 2's key art. 

In Season 1, Snowpiercer was all about revolution, about what happened when Layton (Daveed Diggs) was able to use his detective skills to leverage his way out of the tail and begin to affect real change in the rest of the train even as Melanie (Jennifer Connelly) seemed to resist him at every turn. Through a murder mystery, a trial, a dangerous scientific experiment, and many more secrets, Layton and Melanie eventually realized they were actually on the same side, and perhaps the only way for humanity to survive was to break down the illusions of the old order on the train and make way for a new one.

That brings plenty of struggles of its own, as Layton found out just as Season 1 was nearing its end, but reorganizing society onboard humanity's ark train turned out to be the least of his and Melanie's worries. It turns out a second train was out there the whole time, this one under the command of the enigmatic Mr. Wilford himself, played by Sean Bean. As you can see from the exclusive key art below, Wilford's presence, as well as the presence of his train, looms large in Season 2 — and we're not likely to be rid of him anytime soon. 

TNT

Back in October, ahead of Snowpiercer's New York Comic Con appearance, showrunner Graeme Manson offered SYFY WIRE a tease of what's ahead in the struggle against Wilford, and why it won't just be a rehash of Season 1's battles.

"In the first season, we had not just a war, but a revolution, and it was violent and it carried a lot of those brutal fighting of the film, which I love so much," Manson said. "Wilford's a different kind of foe for Layton. Wilford is underhanded, incredibly charismatic, he has a support on the train already, and he's incredibly strategic. So for Layton, it's a battle of wills and we did set about to create a different kind of war here. A more political war, really." But this new, "more politica war" is not the only struggle onboard Snowpiercer, because no matter who's in charge in the end, people still want to survive to fight another day. That means that as Layton and Wilford are engaged in their struggle for supremacy, Melanie — who's just discovered that her daughter Alexandra (Rowan Blanchard) is still alive and under Wilford's care — will also be hard at work.

According to TNT's official synopsis for Season 2, her goal will be to "lead the charge on a shocking new discovery that could change the fate of humanity." What could it be? Does it have anything to do with what she finds outside the train at the end of Season 1? Will she succeed? We'll find out soon enough. 

Snowpiercer returns January 25 at 9 p.m. ET on TNT. If you need to catch up before then, you'll definitely have a chance, because January 1 will bring the entire first season of the series to streaming HBO Max.