Warehouse 13 Returns! Season 4.5 Syfy Press Call Teasers

[Please note since Episode 4.11 “The Living and The Dead,” the premier of Season 4.5, has been available online at Syfy.com there are some references to it. However, please watch the premier of Warehouse 13 live on Monday on Syfy!]

The Warehouse 13 entourage.

Welcome back, Warehouse 13!  It’s been a long, six-month wait for the second half of Season 4 – Season 4.5 as it’s being called.  Time to sit back and once again enjoy the hijinks, drama, comedy, familial love, and mystery that encompasses the Warehouse and its agents.

At the halfway point, we were left with Artie’s mental split, Leena’s death, the release of the Chinese Orchid and its sweating sickness, and Claudia stabbing her father figure.  To talk about how to clean all that up and manage such a loss, Eddie McClintock (Pete Lattimer), Joannne Kelly (Myka Bering), and showrunner Jack Kenny got together on a Syfy press call to dish about the upcoming ten episodes.

A gut punch indeed.

The first thing the Warehouse has to deal with upon its return is Leena’s death, not to mention Artie’s actions and what that means for his team, both as agents and as family members, as well as what the Orchid is going to do to the rest of the world. Suffice to say, as you’ll find out in the premiere, Artie lives. But how he does that and the tension it creates between him and Claudia is a big part of the story. Jack says, “She had to stab him and bring him back when he didn’t want to come back… So there are some big hurdles to get over and then the rest of the crew has to help Artie… deal with this and to help the warehouse move on with what it has to do.”

And this is tough, folks! Remember Myka and Pete finding Leena? Pete’s vibe beforehand? Claudia’s unwanted realization of what she had to do once the dagger was in her hands? That’s a lot to work through. Jack notes that in regards to Leena’s death, “there’s a lot of different levels that that played on for me as a showrunner and head writer. Essentially we needed somebody to die and stay dead because we’d brought back Artie, we brought back Steve, and if death doesn’t mean anything than the stories no longer have stakes.”

We know that artifacts can do so much, and the agents are affected in ways we can only imagine.  Leena, as a non-field agent, made a lot of sense. She wasn’t a central action figure, but we were all heavily invested in her and her relationships with everyone else. Jack  continues, “[I]t became [a question of] who in the cast can we lose and yet still have a powerful impact on everybody, and Leena was the obvious choice… she’s not an agent and yet it would have meaning for the cast to lose her because she’s such a warm and loving presence in their lives.  So it was the perfect opportunity to really punch everybody in the gut and have them deal with something monumental in their lives.”

Claudia and Artie both ask themselves, “What have I done?”

And what a gut punch it was. Once you watch Episode 4.11, “The Living and The Dead,” you’ll see how hard it is for Artie to deal with what he’s done. It’ll take a few episodes for the agents and regents to work through it, but that’ll be alongside the new adventures, too.  Jack acknowledges this: “Premieres are always so heavily involved with cleaning up the mess we made in the finale of the season before that, it’s oftentimes a lot of exposition but really fun.”  So while there is no shortage of drama and sadness with things that happen to our favorite warehouse agents, there’s always the comedy.

“The term we’ve coined is thrilleromedy, says Eddie.  “You get everything: you get fantasy, you get drama, you get romance, you get horror, you get sci-fi thrown in there and then you get great comedy in there… that’s what keeps people coming back because it’s an entire show… and we pull it off again here in 4.5.” Jack, agreeing, says “That’s what we’re striving for, a roller coaster ride. It’s a fun ride and I want you to laugh and cry and just have fun with it.”  Episode 4.11 is a full-force return to the thrilleromedy. I laughed out loud, got emotional, and was laughing again. It’s a great lead in for Season 4.5.

Pete struggles with drama.

It’s hard not to enjoy a show that gives each of its characters personal tics and distinct ways to handle physical and emotional distress alongside a hunt for an artifact, and a bit of a history lesson to boot. Each character is unique and present, but in different ways. Eddie elaborates on Pete and Myka, “Pete uses his sense of humor to protect himself. It’s a defense mechanism… If he were not good at his job then you could say he’s an idiot, but he’s good at his job and he’s loyal and he’s heroic. And ultimately, if you notice, he ends up solving a lot of the things that Myka didn’t think of because Myka thinks more linearly than he does. So you need his type of mentality around.”

Jack adds, “[Pete] makes a joke, it keeps him calm, it keeps him moving rather than focusing on the danger in the moment. That’s the way his mind works. it’s his survival technique, as Eddie said.”

As for Myka, Season 4.5 is a big deal. Joanne tells us “something happens in the arc of this season that will change my character’s life forever. And because we have someone like Jack Kenny who continues to push the envelope and really delve into the personal stories of these characters it’s exciting. I’m excited to see how everybody reacts because it’s going to be a wild ride.”

For Claudia, especially, it’ll be a  special sort of wild ride. Jack comments “We’ve always teased that Claudia has a destiny at the warehouse beyond just being an agent. And one of the things we’ll learn in Season 4.5, and even in Season 4, is that there are certain people destined to be connected to the warehouse… Claudia is just one of those people destined to be here.”  Which makes perfect sense as we’ve watched Claudia’s special intuitiveness grow with the Warehouse and the objects it contains. To her, the Warehouse is much like a living thing.  And it was partially through that understanding, she was able to bring back Jinks.

Jinks learns just how hard it is to come back from the dead.

For a show that delves into the lives of the agents and a job that no one else can do, Jack describes why Warehouse 13 doesn’t do intimate relationships. “The show is basically an action-adventure comedy, and our guys are always out in the field or it isn’t really much of a story… It’s really hard to service any kind of relationship…. because it takes them out of the story or we have to manufacture something else happening. [R]elationships can pop up briefly, but then they just have to be in the background.”

And as we’ve seen, there have been quite a few attempts at relationships. Pete and the veterinarian. Claudia and the witness protection guy. Artie and Dr. Vanessa. Even Myka and H.G. Wells. But because the show has always been primarily about artifacts and about the relationships of the agents and their belief in one another, it’s mostly that they, especially Myka and Pete, have no time for a relationship. However, Joanne clears the air a bit on Myka and H.G.: “I think there’s something really nice about having two women that aren’t, you know, bitchy to each other, that two women, yes women, actually do like each other and sometimes can love… and I don’t think H.G. is ever a negative thing in Myka’s world.” Which has pretty much been what we’ve seen with Myka’s complete confidence in H.G.’s actions, and utter support when H.G. was making world-changing decisions. Jack elaborates that “in [an upcoming] Episode 4.15 [“Instinct], some issues come up between H.G. and Myka… asks some tough questions [and] raises some really tough issues with her about where she is and what she’s doing and only someone who loves you can ask those kinds of questions without getting thrown out of the room.” Joanne agrees. “It’s a really interesting dynamic and I’m excited for the fans who are a fan of that relationship to see that episode because I think they’ll be very happy.”

H.G. will return briefly in Season 4.5, answering some questions as she does.

Jaime Murray returning as H.G. this season isn’t the only guest appearance that’ll please regular viewers. In just ten episodes, Warehouse 13 has a roster of guests for just about everyone. Buffy fans will be thrilled with James Marsters’ appearance in the first return episode, and that’s alongside Polly Walker. Anthony Head will be the big villain the Warehouse faces in the last three episodes of the season. Jack goes on to add: “Emily Bergl is coming on in Episode 4.12. In Episode 4.13… we’re joined by Missi Pyle and Enrico Colantoni.” In Episode 4.14 it’s “Joel Grey with Steve Valentine and Nora Zehetner…. Charlie Weber comes on to play with us in Episode 4.16, Cynthia Watros is in Episode 4.17.” And that also includes Kelly Hu who comes to run the B&B. (And no, I will never say ‘in Leena’s stead.’ Because really, who could replace Leena?)

This season is going to be fantastic.

Watch Warehouse 13 on Syfy, Mondays beginning April 29 at 10/9c