While the plot of the series’ long-delayed third season (Infamy came out in 2019), begins with Pepper, he’s merely the catalyst. Devil in Silver is as much an ensemble piece as was the stellar first season, staffed with a Widow’s Bay–style lineup of heavy-hitter TV actors including Judith Light, CCH Pounder, Stephen Root, Aasif Mandvi, and John Benjamin Hickey.

Expanding the story beyond Pepper is more than a matter of making use of the talent on hand, however. It’s true that he’s important to the entity that has haunted New Hyde since its founder, Dr. Walter (Hickey), practiced hundreds of involuntary lobotomies. This devil — or duppy, as it’s called by Guyanese immigrant and ward administrator Miss Chris (Pounder) — feeds on the suffering of New Hyde’s patients. I won’t tell you how, but Pepper is the key to its plans to continue eating. 

But it’s precisely Pepper’s belief that he is important, his bone-deep conviction that he’s a great guy and fuck you if you disagree, that makes him so attractive to the devil. That anger gives him vitality, and that can be used. Taking the form of a rich white eugenicist with a history of violence against women and trying to enlist an angry blue-collar white guy with something to prove: Now that’s the work of the devil alright.

[…]

SEAN T. COLLINS: Pepper is the main character, but he’s not the Heroic Protagonist, so to speak.

CHRIS CANTWELL: This was one area where we wanted it to have some grounded nature in the way it reflected the horrors of our world today. The core team was really Victor, me, Karyn Kusama — who was EP through the entire thing and directed the first block of episodes — and David Zucker, who runs television for [executive producer Ridley Scott’s company] Scott Free. It was the four of us huddling up and making sure this thing felt real. Our joke was that the only thing worse than the devil would be the American healthcare system. So a moment where Pepper punches the devil to death and saves everybody and goes out in a blaze of glory…that didn’t feel of a piece with the verisimilitude we were trying to create inside that place. 

The character became about the harder challenge of living for someone as opposed to dying for them. It was very important to Karyn not to drive everybody into nihilism; she wanted us to have some note of hope, but which also shows the burden of what that could mean, to be there for somebody you’ve hurt in the past — specifically for a white man who has gone through the gauntlet that normally he would have the privilege of not experiencing. 

I’m so excited to share this one, or really these two, with you: I wrote about The Terror: Devil in Silver and also interviewed showrunner Chris Cantwell (Halt and Catch Fire) about it for Welcome to Hell World. Featuring a Widow’s Bay–level cast of excellent TV actors including Dan Stevens, Judith Light, CCH Pounder, Steven Root, John Benjamin Hickey, and Aasif Mandvi, the show is the sleeper horror series of the year — it gets inside you and burns away in there like an ember. It’s on AMC+/Shudder in its entirety right now while also airing weekly on AMC on cable.

OBSERVER: How quickly did you find out that the show was gonna be renewed for a final season?

Chris Cantwell: We found out that afternoon, actually. The network called us and said, “Are you available for a conference call in four minutes?” They couldn’t find Chris, so I actually had to call Chris’s wife, which I try to never do for work. We got him on the phone, and they gave us they news, and they told us to call the cast, so we had to quickly call all the cast, and then they put the press release out like 45 minutes after that. They run a tight ship at AMC! They do it quickly.

This may be a stupid question, but how did that feel?

Chris Rogers: I mean, we were elated to get to do another season of the show. Somehow there’s gonna be 40 of these! You catch us on a nostalgic morning when we’re looking back on when we wrote this, and when it got picked up — when we thought it would never get picked up…To say there’s gonna be 40 episodes would’ve been beyond a dream at that time. You immediately register that, and the elation of getting to go back to Atlanta with this family we’ve built: the cast, the crew, the editors. We know their kids’ names, you know? So that is a thrill.

On another level, it’s bittersweet to see the end in sight. But it’s also kind of a creative gift, just to know that that’s what you’re writing to. We try to end each season like it could be the end of the series, but this year is gonna be different. Maybe it gives us the ammunition to top this third season, which frankly we kinda put everything we could into. So, a lot of emotions. We’re feeling all the feelings tonight.

I interviewed Halt and Catch Fire co-creators and showrunners Chris Cantwell and Chris Rogers about the end of Season 3 and the “gift” of Season 4 for the New York Observer.