Ben Barnes Teases Darkling's 'Loneliness' in 'Shadow and Bone' Season 2

Shadow and Bone will soon be returning for its second season, with Netflix confirming on Thursday, December 8, that the new batch of episodes of the fantasy series would land on the streaming platform on Thursday, March 16.

Actor Ben Barnes has teased with Newsweek what fans can expect from his character General Kirigan, known as The Darkling in Leigh Bardugo's novels, in the forthcoming episodes.

Season 1 ended on the dramatic moment where The Darkling staggered out of The Fold following his fight against Alina Starkov (Jessie Mei Li) and others. Scarred but alive, Kirigan had shadow-like monsters called nichevo'ya following him as he retreated back to the Little Palace to recover his strength.

Ben Barnes Teases 'Shadow and Bone' Season 2

Barnes spoke with Newsweek ahead of the release of his episode of Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities in October, and although he joked that he could not reveal much about Shadow and Bone "on pain of death" he did tease a little of what was to come for the villain.

Season 2 will draw inspiration from Bardugo's second book in her Shadow and Bone trilogy, titled "Siege and Storm," as well as from the first book in her Six of Crows duology. In the book, The Darkling appears on and off throughout, but in the show the character will be expanded upon, the actor said.

"I will say that, I think I've said before, that the character in the books becomes quite sort of emblematic after the first one, right? Representative of something dark," Barnes told Newsweek.

"So there has been a lot of efforts to try to still make him a real character, and, much like everything I've been talking about with [Cabinet of Curiosities], is just to explore the depths of his feeling and his ideology and his loneliness, and all of those things that motivate him, that drive him."

The actor added that Season 2 will also examine "the connections that he has and doesn't have, and the things that he feels and doesn't feel."

"I think that my focus for the five months that we were up there [filming] was to champion those things, and our showrunners [Eric Heisserer and Daegan Fryklind] were so collaborative with me in helping design that, which is a real privilege," The Punisher star went on.

"I haven't seen much of the second season, but what I have seen is really exciting and it's obviously a huge world and it's got so many more characters and, yea, I think it's gonna be great."

The Netflix show's second season will indeed introduce several new characters that fans of the book will know and love, including Nikolai Lantsov (Patrick Gibson), twins Tolya Yul-Bataar (Lewis Tan) and Tamar Kir-Bataar (Anna Leong Brophy), and Wylan Hendricks (Jack Wolfe) whose surname is Van Eck in the novels.

Shadow and Bone Season 2 premieres on Netflix on Thursday, March 16.