Ben Barnes on Where Stephen King Sci-Fi Series ‘The Institute’ Goes in Season 2

If Ben Barnes looks familiar, that’s because you’ve probably seen him in one or more of the many genre projects he’s starred in across recent years. That includes Netflix’s Shadow and Bone, HBO’s Westworld, and—throwing it back to his breakout role—Prince Caspian in the Chronicles of Narnia films. In the MGM+ series The Institute, based on the Stephen King novel, he’s Tim Jamieson, an Army veteran and former police officer. In the show’s first season, he starts asking questions about the heavily guarded facility at the center of the story. Officially, it’s an infectious disease lab, a cover story that Tim begins to chip away at to reveal the truth—it’s a place where telekinetic and telepathic kids are held captive and weaponized. Season one basically followed the book from start to finish. That means season two, which arrives November 8, gets to be its own creation. Just like anyone who watched The Institute season one, Barnes said he was “really curious” to see where the story would go next. © MGM+ “When we got the script for the finale of season one, the last scene was actually the same as the last scene in the book, where everyone’s together on a farm and it’s jumped forward in time, and they’re a bit more of a family,” Barnes recalled. “We never actually got to shoot that scene because they wanted to save where the relationships might go and leave themselves the opportunity to investigate timelines that are shorter than that or further than that. So I was really curious to see how the relationships would develop into the second season and how they would expand the world. In the first season it really is just the Institute in this one sleepy town, and then in the second season we’ve got these kids and their sort of pseudo-cop dad being hunted by the powers that be. They’re hiding at the beginning, but at some point they have to kind of take the reins and fight back.” Barnes calls Tim a “dad” to the kids—especially when it comes to Joe Freeman’s Luke, whose parents were murdered in season one—and we see that role become more solidified in season two. “I think it’s more conceptual in the first season. He meets this kid, and suddenly there’s this opportunity to save someone. And he has previously been responsible for hurting someone. And so I think he feels this opportunity to right this wrong and to make amends and to devote himself to something else,” Barnes said. “I think by the time we get into the second season, he starts to understand that he has actually become a parent to this boy, and without even really fully realizing it. There’s a specific scene for me where he sort of realizes how much he loves him and cares about him. So then it becomes a completely different set of responsibilities. And suddenly, yes, he wants to kind of protect him and save him, but also he wants to empower him to do the right things himself and all of these other questions that come up. So it’s like parenting immediately and on steroids to a teenager with superpowers.” © MGM+ As Barnes referenced, early in season one, we learn about Tim’s past involvement in a shooting incident that forced his resignation from the Boston police force. As his professional life imploded, his personal life also suffered, and he still carries guilt about all of it. He deals with that by trying to start a new life in small-town Maine and telling himself that he won’t involve himself in unnecessary trouble—a vow that crumbles when he becomes entangled in The Institute’s central mystery. In season two, Barnes said, Tim has accepted that he’s not capable of being someone who can sit back and let terrible things happen. “I had gone in, having read the book, thinking this is a man who wants to find peace, wants to find some space, and doesn’t want to involve himself,” the actor said. “And then initially, I thought it was a bit of a contradiction that he then is very nosy and really wants to know everything—he’s the one who’s leading the charge of investigating this town. But I realized it’s just an innate part of him. And that was really interesting. [Tim] knows deep down he is someone who cannot help himself when he thinks there’s injustice.” Barnes continues. “And I’m a little bit like that. I think certainly in the microcosm of my small life, if I feel like someone’s being mistreated or something’s not quite right, I want to help. So I thought that was very interesting. And then in the second season he no longer has to work so hard to figure out why he’s doing what he’s doing; he just has to figure out if he should trust Luke and his superpowers and his ideas more than he should just do what he thinks is the right thing in the moment. So there’s that tension in that.” Even though Barnes had put in an entire season playing Tim already, season two still offered new experiences with the character. © MGM+ “The book is very patient,” he explained. “It asks lots of questions. Tim wants to always do the right thing and figure out what’s going on, but I had a lot of questions every time we were shooting as to [Tim’s] motivation. In the second season, some things happen right off the bat where he’s dealing with a lot of different emotions—anger, frustration, and also this dilemma of whether he wants to keep the people that he’s come to care about so deeply close to him and protect them, or whether he wants to fight back and kick the doors down and try and fight back against the hierarchy. It was very expansive for me, and everything was very deliberately motivated in the second season in a way that it was a much punchier job for me.” The Institute season two arrives November 8 on MGM+. Want more io9 news? Check out the best movies and TV shows to stream this month and all the upcoming sci-fi, fantasy, and horror books that should be on your radar.