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SYFY‘s The Ark is back! The hit science fiction series about humanity’s hunt for a new home in space has at last returned for its big Season 2 debut — and right out of the gate, the new season’s first episode answered a ton of burning questions about the dangling fate of the endangered Ark One and its crew.

After months of agonizing over who survived the explosive disaster that closed out the show’s Season 1 cliffhanger finale, viewers finally know what became of the Ark One survivors left stranded in the bowels of the badly damaged ship. Thanks to a planet-sized blast that sent debris ripping through the hull, nearly half the team hadn’t been heard from after the big impact severed ties between Captain Sharon Garnet (Christie Burke), and everyone else who was with her on the bridge.

The Season 1 sendoff left fans in suspense over the long list of trapped crew members who might not have made it out alive — a list that includes geeky green thumb Angus Medford (Ryan Adams), security chief Felix Strickland (Pavle Jerinić), head of medicine Dr. Sanjivni Kabir (Shalini Peiris), maintenance tech Eva Markovic (Tiana Upcheva), and the ship’s unofficial “it” girl, Cat Brandice (Christina Wolfe).

For more on The Ark:
Everything to Know About The Ark Season 2 on SYFY
What Jonathan Glassner Learned on SG-1 That He’s Bringing to SYFY’s The Ark Season 2
What’s Next on SYFY’s The Ark? Christie Burke & Stacey Read Tease Season 2 Twists (EXCLUSIVE)

Why [SPOILER!] had to die in The Ark Season 2 premiere 

Thanks to a last-minute rescue from neighboring vessel Ark 15 and its questionably-friendly leader Evenly Maddox (Jelena Stupljanin), Garnet and the bridge team hopped a shuttle to safety in The Ark’s Season 2 premiere. Meanwhile, the episode doubled back to show the remaining crew in chaos inside the fiery depths of the damaged Ark One.

As viewers discovered, most of the trapped crew was shaken but still breathing… except, that is, for Brandice, who whispered her last words to science mastermind William Trust (Paul Murray), while succumbing on a stretcher to a fatal wound.

In light of the rest of the crew’s survival, Cat’s death marks a decidedly bittersweet beginning for high stakes at play in The Ark’s second season. As series creators Dean Devlin and Jonathan Glassner recently shared with SYFY WIRE, Cat’s demise sends the signal that Season 2 definitely “ups the ante” (as Devlin puts it), alerting fans that nothing’s off limits on a sci-fi show where no victory is guaranteed.

“I think it’s really important, on a show like this, where we [establish] right away that anything can happen,” Devlin explained. “When we go through these dramas, you don’t know who’s gonna survive. And I think that really ups the ante, and separates us from a lot of shows that [have] done this in the past.”

Cat came though Season 1 of The Ark with an especially entangled and intriguing backstory. Back on Earth, she’d enjoyed fame as a celebrity social media influencer, a beauty-first gig that helped her score a coveted spot on the Ark One despite her bringing no real mission-ready qualifications to the table.

Cat’s tryst-y relationship with William Trust, the wealthy, brainy (and at the time very married) science mastermind behind the entire Ark program, emerged as just one of Cat’s many well-guarded secrets in Season 1. She also bore a major hidden disfigurement from one of the widespread diseases that had ravaged Earth, and also confided just enough of her past to Garnet to inspire the acting captain to make her the ship’s de facto mental health counselor — a role that Cat found a way to survive and thrive in, despite knowing nothing about the actual job.

Glassner agreed that killing Cat off in the Season 2 premiere made for an agonizing creative call, but that the death of such a key character definitely helps  keep fans invested in The Ark’s always-dangerous bigger premise.

“We ended the season last year with the ship being really badly damaged. And it just felt like a cheat for us to come back and nobody was hurt or killed or anything,” Glassner explained.

“So the first thing we did when we sat down in the writers’ room for this season is say, ‘Which character do we have the most left to do with — and the least left to do with?’ — because we love all our ‘children’ and we love all our actors … It was a painful decision, and we had to just pick the one that we had the least left to do with. And we felt like we had kind of explored that character’s story, so we finally said, ‘I guess that’s gonna have to be her,’ as painful as that is… because we loved her, too!”

Cat Brandice might be gone, but Season 2 of The Ark hasn’t claimed larger casualties among the crew of the still-smoldering Ark One… at least, not yet.

Catch new Season 2 episodes of The Ark on SYFY each Wednesday at 10/9c, and stream all of Season 1 on Peacock here.