Are you ready for a some impending Apocalypse sci-fi?
Let's begin with Revelation 9:1: "And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit."
That's the opening teaser from The CW for its new drama The Messengers. If that piques your interest, you can thank Eoghan O'Donnell. The Fayetteville native created the series and is a co-executive producer.
The pilot episode "Awakening" (written by O'Donnell) airs at 8 p.m. Friday. It's rated TV-14, so hide the pre-teens. Here's how The CW sums things up.
Under the white-hot sun of the New Mexico desert, scientist Vera Buckley watches in fascination as a mysterious object plummets to Earth and explodes in a blinding flash at the exact spot where the first atomic bomb was tested. The object sends out a shock wave that briefly stops her heart and panics her techie co-worker, Alan Harris.
Buckley, a struggling radio-astronomer, is not the only one affected by the blast. She is instantly and mysteriously connected to four other strangers, who also collapse and die, only to miraculously come back to life minutes later. They are:
• Erin Calder, a young mother desperate to protect her 7-year-old daughter from an abusive ex-husband.
• Peter Moore, a troubled high school student who finally lashes out to end the constant bullying he can no longer endure. (O'Donnell notes: "Peter starts out in Arkansas, like me, but his story is hardly autobiographical.")
• Raul Garcia, a federal agent looking to escape his five-year undercover assignment in a violent Mexican drug cartel.
• Joshua Silburn Jr., a charismatic televangelist following in his father's footsteps.
All five awaken after the mysterious blast with extraordinary gifts and may be the only hope for preventing the impending Rapture.
Most mysterious of all is the figure known only as The Man. He wakes up naked and burned in the desert. The Man brings death and suffering wherever he appears.
The Man offers Vera the one thing she wants most in life -- to be reunited with her kidnapped son. All she has to do is help him with one little morally complicated task that puts her on a collision course with nurse Rose Arvale who, after a seemingly random act of violence left her in a coma for seven years, suddenly begins to stir.
As you would expect from The CW, the cast is young and exceedingly telegenic. The series stars Shantel VanSanten (Gang Related, One Tree Hill) as Vera; Jon Fletcher (City of Dreams) as Joshua; Sofia Black-D'Elia (Betrayal, Gossip Girl) as Erin; JD Pardo (Revolution) as Raul; and Joel Courtney (Super 8) as Peter.
Anna Diop (Everybody Hates Chris) plays Rose, and Craig Frank (Mixology) is Alan.
Most interesting of all is Portuguese actor and former model Diogo Morgado as The Man. Viewers may recognize Morgado from his portrayal of Jesus in the 2013 History Channel mini-series The Bible from Mark Burnett and Roma Downey.
Suffice it to say that in The Messengers, The Man is about as far from Jesus as one can get. "Prepare to meet the new face of evil," The CW warns.
The Messengers is O'Donnell's big break in Hollywood. Born on Halloween in 1982, O'Donnell is a 2001 graduate of Fayetteville High School. He went on to Harvard University (English) and Northwestern University (screenwriting).
"After college and grad school, I moved out to Los Angeles, where I hoped to get a start as a screenwriter," O'Donnell says. "While working a day job, I wrote the pilot of The Messengers in the evenings and on weekends. I never really dared hope that someone would actually buy the script, let alone allow me to continue telling the story I'd mapped out as a series, so this past year has been a real whirlwind."
There's nothing like the magic of television.
"The craziest thing about producing the series," O'Donnell says, "has been realizing that each and every word the other writers or I write -- whether it be a prop description, or a fight scene, or a meteor impact -- will be made real on screen. Hundreds of people work to make everything right. It's exciting, humbling and nerve-wracking all at once."
If you're in Fayetteville and want to congratulate his proud parents, mom Gayle recently retired from teaching junior high for many years and dad Charles is a co-owner of Fayetteville's legendary Dickson Street Bookshop.
"Eoghan's creativity in writing started with loads and loads of reading," Gayle says. "He grew up among the tall shelves of books."
Thirteen episodes have been ordered for Season 1.
Style on 04/12/2015