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Breaking Down The Mystery: 'Prison Break' Creator Talks That Big Season 5 Twist

Now, show creator Paul Scheuring has spoken out about Prison Break's Season 5 premiere, Kaniel Outis, and whether THAT character really is dead!

By Tom ChapmanPublished 6 years ago 2 min read
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'Prison Break' [Credit: Fox]

After a long eight years, we are finally back where we belong and behind the bars of #Fox's #PrisonBreak. Rising from the graveyard of show cancellation, Prison Break joins the likes of Gilmore Girls, Heroes, and the upcoming Charmed in shows you ask, "did it really need to come back?" Where Gilmore Girls and Heroes probably fall into the "no" camp, Prison Break's revival reminded us what made the show so addictive in the first place.

Now, show creator #PaulScheuring has spoken out about the Season 5 premiere, Kaniel Outis, and whether THAT character really is dead!

Breaking The Mould

'Prison Break' [Credit: Fox]

Literally bringing the whole gang back together, Scheuring revealed his musings behind the resurrection of #MichaelScofield, but also why it is a mystery that won't be solved anytime soon. If you are still scratching your head after the premiere "Ogygia," then it means Scheuring has done his job.

Long-term fans of the show will know that we saw #WentworthMiller's Scofield perish at the end of #TV movie Prison Break: The Final Chapter. When Season 5 was announced, many were skeptical about how the show could work without its lead character, only to be left even more bemused when we found out that Michael would be back.

Talking about the mid-episode scene where Lincoln Burrows digs up his brother's grave to find it empty, Scheuring said it was a necessary, but tragic, part of the story:

"That was a tough scene. I had difficulty writing it...On some level, digging up the grave is a little bit absurd. But also on some level, it's the only thing Lincoln can do.At the end of the day, I decided that Lincoln's need, that compulsion, was greater than my own coyness as a writer. It has to be done at the end of the day. You have to know."

Drop The Mike

'Prison Break' [Credit: Fox]

If gravedigging weren't batsh*t enough for the first episode of Season 5, how about the continuing saga of Michael and that the "alive" Scofield is claiming he isn't Michael at all?

As Lincoln and his former partner in crime, C-Note (Rockmond Dunbar), head to Yemen, they are left shocked that Michael is working under the name Kaniel Outis and seems to have no recollection of this Scofield character. Executive producer Vaun Wilmott confirmed that we are supposed to be just as confused as the characters are:

"By the end of the first episode, we really wanted to leave a question mark over the character of Michael. Who is he? What has he become? Is it him? If it's not him, who is this man that looks exactly like him? Also, if it is him, could those seven years have massively changed him?"

For those who puzzling over the alias of Outis, Scheuring cleverly pulled it from The Odyssey, with Outis being the name that Odysseus uses when he returns from being presumed dead for years.

The Jury's Out

'Prison Break' [Credit: Fox]

Whether the man in the cell really is Michael or actually a man called Kaniel Outis, Wentworth Miller's role in the new series thankfully took a backseat to amp up the mystery. Scheuring said it would have been far too easy to just plonk Michael in prison and have his brother come and break him out:

"Initially, if it was just Lincoln walking up to Michael at the end of the episode, and he walks up to Michael and says, 'I'm here to break you out,' and Michael says, 'Good,' it just feels like ... I feel like it was done in season three. It becomes this trope in Prison Break where one brother comes up and says, 'I'm going to get you out.' And the other one goes, 'Good!'"

Saving Miller until the end of the episode and concluding with the powerhouse line of "I'm not Michael Scofield," left us with a twist that no one would've expected. As the mystery unravels and the Scofield/Burrows bromance tries to get back on track, it promises to be a long nine weeks of tactically hidden tattoos, engineering enigmas, and Robert Knepper's glorious role as T-Bag. For another week though, it looks like it is lights out on Prison Break.

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About the Creator

Tom Chapman

Tom is a Manchester-based writer with square eyes and the love of a good pun. Raised on a diet of Jurassic Park, this ’90s boy has VHS flowing in his blood. No topic is too big for this freelancer by day, crime-fighting vigilante by night.

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