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This week’s wild, totally offbeat episode of SYFY’s The Ark marked a delightfully surprising departure, as characters we only thought we knew got the chance to show how a simple twist of physics can have big ripple effects on the alternate-reality people they might’ve become.

Well, that, plus one other teeny-tiny side note: Cat Brandice (Christina Wolfe) returns from the dead! Or, at least, an alternate-reality version of her does. After succumbing to fatal injuries in The Ark’s Season 2 premiere, fans might’ve expected never again to hear from the flaky former social media celebrity who managed last season to nab a coveted survivor’s seat aboard the Ark One.

But this week, in Season 2, Episode 4, “The Other You,” a time rift created by the ship’s rocky drop out of faster-than-light (FTL) travel shows us a whole other version of Cat Brandice — and one who, at least for this single episode, is still very much alive.

The Ark’s Jonathan Glassner on bringing back Cat… with a spiffy British accent!

Everyone, in fact, gets a total body-swap in this week’s freewheeling episode, an incredibly fun outing where The Ark’s main cast of actors gets to stretch their legs and play against type. In the alternate-reality version of the Ark One that this week’s time rift creates, nerdy Angus (Ryan Adams) becomes a butt-kicking security tough guy who can even take down the burly Lt. Brice (Richard Fleeshman), while Brice himself vanishes from the real Ark One only to discover that, in another reality, he’s actually the long-dead, heroically remembered lifelong love who Captain Sharon Garnet (Christie Burke) had someday hoped to marry.

As for Cat Brandice, not only is she alive and kicking somewhere in the vastness of the show’s alternate spacetime, she’s actually thriving as an Oxford-trained research scientist — a cool, competent brainiac who prefers to go by the much more serious-sounding name of “Catrina.” As co-showrunner and executive producer Jonathan Glassner explained on this week’s After the Ark podcast, surprising fans with an alt-reality episode that reunited them with Cat (or, should we say, Catrina) was always part of The Ark’s secret Season 2 strategy.

“What parallel universes are, is people taking different paths,” Glassner said, reflecting on how rejuvenating it was for the show’s ensemble cast to explore other sides to their familiar sci-fi characters.

“One of the most popular episodes last season was the ‘comet-water’ episode, where everybody is having hallucinations,” Glassner added. “We literally said, ‘We need an episode like that this season, [one] that’s fun and out there and doesn’t really have a whole lot to do with the big story arc… We knew what our actors could do, and we thought it would be fun to see them get to play different versions of themselves.”

Whether it’s Garnet showing a much more vulnerable and softer side, Alicia (Stacey Read) playing a grimier, more jaded version of her usually put-together and optimistic self, or Brice hilariously struggling just to figure what the heck is going on, each key character got a complete personality makeover in this week’s episode. And by surprising fans with Cat’s unexpected return from the dead, it even gave viewers a fun reminder to always stay on their toes — because on The Ark, as Glassner teased, no story twist is ever really off the table.

“We were always planning on bringing [Cat] back,” he said. “When I told her; when I had to deliver the bad news to [Wolfe] that we were killing her character, I said, ‘We’re gonna do one more episode with you in an alternate universe — because I don’t want to say goodbye to you!

“…The other thing was, when I met Christina, she has this beautiful British accent that she was not doing on our show,” Glassner continued. “So I said, ‘Let’s let her do her real accent,’ which just changes her character completely; instantly. Because she just seems so much more sophisticated with that accent!”

Beside themselves: The Ark cast on their alternate-reality characters

This week’s episode was especially rewarding for fans who’ve followed The Ark from the start, giving viewers a handful of hilariously tantalizing glimpses into each character’s hidden potential. For Fleeshman (Brice), the whole episode played like one giant love letter to fans already familiar with Garnet’s stoic approach to leadership, or even of his own character’s typically brash confidence (after all, the alt-reality version of Brice is reduced to running around the ship stark naked… and totally confused).

“Do you know what was really fun about that episode, which I genuinely loved getting a chance to do? The ‘scene’ doesn’t just exist; the scene exists within the context of the history that you’ve created with other characters, and also any future that they might be trying to get [to],” Fleeshman explained. “…because it was so absurd and so left outside of any of this framework, [it] allowed not just me, but also the people I was working with, this great freedom of just throwing the shackles off.”

After The Ark: Season 2, Episode 4

Garnet, Fleeshman added, provides a perfect example. She’s “so consistently shackled by having to do the right thing; having to be the leader; having to make the right choice; having to be selfless. [But] suddenly, she’s playing this vulnerable, damsel-in-distress kind of version — and I think it was really lovely and liberating, and she [Burke] did some really beautiful work.”

As different as their alt-reality selves are, there still had to be a kernel of truth and consistency to each character’s parallel-universe version in order for the episode to keep fans fascinated. “I love the way Christie played it,” said Glassner, “because she was almost this mousy, innocent woman — not the strong leader that she is in our world.”

“Even though it’s an alternate reality of Garnet,” added Burke herself, “that alternate reality still has to be based in the fact that this Garnet we know today could potentially still exist… I had so much fun!”

Though everyone seemed to be back to their original selves by the end of this week’s episode, there’s simply no guessing where the Ark One’s unpredictable space journey might carry the crew next week. Tune in to SYFY Wednesdays at 10/9c to catch each new Season 2 episode of The Ark.

Where to Stream Season 1 of The Ark

Need to catch up on the bigger story? All 12 episodes of The Ark‘s debut season are streaming now on Peacock.

The NBCUniversal platform currently offers two monthly subscription plans: Premium ($7.99 a month with ads) and Premium Plus ($13.99 a month with no ads and download access for certain titles). If you’re a student, you can enjoy the Premium plan for just $1.99 for an entire year!