The worst is yet to come, or so it seems when the season 1 finale of ABC’s political thriller series “Designated Survivor” aired last week. What new conspiracies will President Kirkman (Kiefer Sutherland) and FBI Agent Wells (Maggie Q) be battling against in the forthcoming second season?

In season 1’s final episode, an email from Atwood (Malik Yoba) finally led to the unmasking and consequent capture of the White House mole, Whitaker (Richard Waugh), along with more than 200 of his co-conspirators across the country. This victory, however, was very quickly dampened by the fact that Lloyd (Terry Serpico) was still at large and even has gained access to the Pentagon’s most highly classified server.

This development does not only set the stage for the second season’s potential main antagonist, but it also brings to light the fact that there really is more to the conspiracy than what meets the eye. What were Whitaker, Lloyd and Lozano really planning to do? Were they at the topmost part of the villainous tier or had they merely been acting on orders from a more powerful source?

Aside from the brewing conspiracy, President Kirkman will also have to struggle through and eventually rise above more challenges and oppositions to his presidency. According to TV Line, during ABC’s Upfronts presentation last week, Sutherland shared that season 2 will see the addition of “no less than three principal characters” to help further flesh out the complexities of running the White House.

The second season will also be featuring more of the personal lives of the main characters and may even show “a midseason event that I believe will knock the socks off our audience.”

“Designated Survivor” will be holding out the same Wednesday time slot of 10 p.m. ET when it returns later this year. Channing Dungey, president of ABC Entertainment Group, shared in a statement about ABC’s 2017–2018 programming that she’s been “incredibly proud” of the series’ storytelling.

Moreover, season 2 will also be ushering in the series’ fourth showrunner in former “The Good Wife” executive producer Keith Eisner.

I’ve just updated the gallery with episode stills from the most recent episodes. Enjoy!

I’ve just updated the gallery with episode stills from the most recent episode plus some stills from the upcoming 2 episodes. Enjoy!

The massive conspiracy at the heart of Designated Survivor took a sharp turn in the past two episodes of the ABC drama, which culminated with Peter MacLeish (Ashley Zukerman), a veritable Manchurian Candidate recently appointed to the role of vice president of the U.S., getting shot to death by his own equally traitorous wife — who proceeded to then turn the gun on herself.

It was a massive moment for the ABC political thriller, an escalation of the stakes when the stakes were already tremendously high. After all, the series rests on the premise of the U.S. government’s destruction paving the way for the untested low-level secretary Tom Kirkman (Kiefer Sutherland) to become the president, despite his almost complete lack of political experience.

During a panel discussion with Sutherland and series creator David Guggenheim following a screening of the episode, ABC News’ Elizabeth Vargas was quick to point out that it’s not just the world of Designated Survivor that features a man without political experience as commander in chief — such is the case in the real world as well, with the election of Donald Trump. Given that parallel, and the resulting breaking news that’s occurring on a near-daily basis, how is it possible for the modern political landscape to not impact the Designated Survivor writing process?

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I’ve just updated the gallery with episode stills from the most recent episode plus tons more stills from the pilot. I will be slowly replacing medium quality stills in the gallery with high quality, as well as getting the episode screencaps up to date.

With a film and television career that has seen him face his fair share of perilous situations while portraying action heroes and the occasional villain, all it takes for Kiefer Sutherland to showcase his most vulnerable side is the subject of love – or the lack thereof. In the tender video for “I’ll Do Anything,” Sutherland’s unvarnished vocals blend with the song’s impassioned, take-me-as-I-am message, delivering a sweet, romantic Valentine that’s all about finding the perfect love in the last place you’d think to look.

“What I discovered when writing this song,” Sutherland tells Rolling Stone Country, “was that one gets to a point in life – hopefully earlier than later – when everything you need is already around you … if you’re lucky.”

Penned by Sutherland with his longtime friend – and co-owner of their Ironworks record label – Jude Cole, “I’ll Do Anything” is featured on Down in a Hole, the Americana-flavored LP he released last August. The veteran actor admits that when he began performing songs from the project for audiences, the intimacy of the situation was unexpected.

“One of the things that surprised me the most is that when we went to play our first show, I’d go to explain where a song came from and I didn’t realize how personal that was going to be — how open you have to be to try and make that work,” Sutherland told Rolling Stone Country last year. “But I really enjoyed it. We were playing bars with 250 to 300 people and there was something nice that happened at the end: the audience would understand that there’s not that much different between you and me, regardless of what their perception was when they walked in. The songs did that.”

Sutherland and his band will hit the road Saturday, February 18th, with a show in Niagara Falls, New York, and another the following day in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. More dates are scheduled for the spring, including the Stagecoach Festival on April 30th, in Indio, California, and throughout May.