What Is a Reviver? The Undead Twist Behind SYFY’s New Horror Series, Revival – Yahoo

SYFY’s new original series, Revival, is actually an adaptation of writer Tim Seeley and artist Mike Norton‘s Harvey Award-nominated graphic novel series of the same name. Image Comics’ Revival began with Issue #1 in 2012 and ran for 47 issues. An original horror hit, it took five years to complete the story arc.

Fans of the source material, executive producers/co-creators Luke Boyce and Aaron B. Koontz optioned the graphic novel and made it their goal to adapt Revival with as much reverence as possible. And they loved it so much, they made it a goal to speak with Seeley about how to flesh out the story and characters for a television audience.

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Now, thanks to tonight’s series premiere, “Don’t Tell Dad,” their TV series has finally become a reality. The official synopsis for SYFY’s Revival explains the wild set up: “On one miraculous day in rural Wisconsin, the recently deceased suddenly rise from their graves. But this is no zombie story as the “revived” appear and act just like they once were. When local Officer and single mother Dana Cypress (Melanie Scrofano) is unexpectedly thrown into the center of a brutal murder mystery of her own, she’s left to make sense of the chaos amidst a town gripped by fear and confusion where everyone, alive or undead, is a suspect.”

If you watched the premiere episode, or are just curious about what the heck this non-zombie show is all about, SYFY WIRE is here to explain what a “Reviver” is, and we even got Koontz to explain in his own words how Revival is not like the shows The Walking Dead or The Last of Us.

How SYFY’s new series Revival introduces “Revivers”

In the world of Revival, the rural town of Wausau, Wisconsin experiences a supernatural event. Every townsperson within the boundaries of the town who died on January 1 suddenly comes back to life on January 2. They aren’t monsters or zombies. They’re just back to life with no explanation.

It obviously confounds the world and puts everyone within Wausau on edge. The State and Federal Governments put the whole town under quarantine to try and contain the event and investigate. Everyone who came back to life is dubbed a “Reviver,” and scientists from the CDC arrive to test them to determine why and how this could happen.

In the pilot episode, an older resident named Arlene Stankiewicz (Nicky Guadagni) is discovered to be a “Reviver.” Little Jordan Borchardt (Flora McInroy) is also revealed to be a “Reviver” and is bullied when she returns to her elementary school. But the biggest “Reviver” reveal comes in the very last moments of the episode, when Martha ‘Em’ Cypress (Romy Weltman) is impaled by a wildly violent Arlene in a barn fight. Em immediately heals… which is a by-product that comes with being a “Reviver.”

Series creator Aaron B. Koontz explains that Revival is really all about life

While the premise of Revival might seem to infer that the people who come back to life might be monsters, in truth, “Revivers” are very much used as a metaphor to explore how we as humans process death.

Koontz tells SYFY WIRE that series like The Walking Dead focus on death and survival as human run from the undead. “Our show is about life,” he emphasized. “It’s about second chances. In a way, it’s not that all these people died but it’s almost like they almost died and they get this new look on life. Everyone here gets a perspective change as to what that means.”

Revival, according to Koontz, is a canvas for them to explore the idea of how someone who is different is often put into a box by others, labeled as someone “other,” even when they really aren’t. “In our show, that’s a ‘Reviver,’ right?” he said of their metaphor.

“In the world right now, there’s a lot of very scary ideologies that stem from certain ideas and perspectives on that,” Koontz said, tying Revival to real world problems around acceptance or the profiling of people. “We wanted to talk about those types of themes, which in a zombie show, it’s not about anything like that. [In those shows], it’s just, ‘I’ve got to survive. I don’t want to get bit and I might have to kill my loved one.’ In a zombie show, that’s usually where it’s at its peak moment. But here, it’s about, how do I respect the life I do have? How do I cherish what this is?”

Revival drops new episodes weekly on SYFY every Thursday at 10 p.m. ET. Every episode will be available to stream on Peacock exactly one week after airing.

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