12 Monkeys boss on that heartbreaking double loss

Warning: This story contains major spoilers from Monday’s episode of 12 Monkeys. Read at your own risk!

Time is a fickle lady — and the team learned that the hard way during Monday’s episode of 12 Monkeys.

Upon returning to the future, Railly (Amanda Schull) sabotaged the machine, unaware that she was being possessed by the Witness. The unstable splinter radiation then caused Ramse’s (Kirk Acevedo) son Sam to disappear into the time stream. Before a temporal meltdown could occur, Dr. Eckland (Michael Hogan) sacrificed himself to save the machine. How will that heartbreaking double loss affect everyone? EW turned to executive producer Terry Matalas to find out:

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Why did you decide to kill off Eckland and how does that affect Jones?

TERRY MATALAS: Well, Jones got a little bit of hope. We got to see a new dynamic. She literally got to let her hair down, but now she is going into a much darker place. She views that the creation of time travel and her machine may be the cause of everything — the storms, the Messengers, this entire conspiracy could be her fault, and that is going to be an important plot point of episode eight.

Jones says very cryptically that there’s a solution to all this. Is she planning to destroy the time machine?

Yes and no, I guess is a good teaser response.

If they were to go back and just destroy the time machine before it was even made, would that change everything or not?

That is a question we will answer in episode eight, and will answer if that’s something they even can do.

How will Ramse feel about losing his son? Is he going to try to go into the time stream to find him? Is he angry and vengeful again?

There’s no way to find Sam. There’s no way to know where he went, or if he survived, or for them to know if he got zapped into the middle of the ocean or a brick wall. Of course, we know there was somebody there waiting for him. The question is who is that person? Ramse will go off the rails. He will go after the person responsible for what happened to Sam.

How will Cassie deal in the wake of all this being her fault?

She is also going to a much darker place. She feels as though she was used by the Witness and is going to want revenge. She’s going to be out for blood before this is over.

12 Monkeys airs Mondays at 9 p.m. ET on Syfy.