If you’re a fan of Stephen King’s Mr. Mercedes novel trilogy, you may be in for a bit of a surprise for the upcoming season of the Audience Network original series. While that first season managed to be relatively faithful to the first novel, with the second novel, they’ll be taking things in a whole new direction.

While that second novel worked almost completely as a side story — with our main characters only popping up around 200 pages into the book — the filmmakers are determined to retain the overall throughline of the Brady-Hodges dynamic, and that means bypassing the story revolving around the boy, the writer, and the murderer. Instead, we will be focused on a comatose Brady (whose mass homicide was thwarted by Hodges and co.) and the characters around him.

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Enter actor Max Hernandez, who plays the character of Antonio Montes. This character doesn’t exist in the novels, and when I had to a chance to speak with the actor at San Diego Comic-Con last week, I asked about how he plays into the new narrative of the show.

“Okay, So my character is assistant district attorney Antonio Montes, who’s not in the books, he’s a creation of Dennis LeHane and David E. Kelley. He is in charge of the homicide division, and so he’s in charge of, he would be prosecuting Brady Hartsfield; if Brady Hartsfield was not in a coma.

“So, his whole idea is he’s sort of hoping that Brady Hartsfield wakes from this coma, so he can then put him on trial. So, he’s hoping it’s the trial of the century and propel his career forward.

“Cause, he has aspirations for sorta like higher political power. He doesn’t wanna remain the ADA of homicide in Bridgton, Ohio. He’s thinking more like Senator Montes, President Montes, you know, he has a career track that he’s trying to go down and he’s using Montes, and in some ways he’s using, also he’s using also Dr. Babineaux, Felix Babineaux, to sorta like, “you do what you need to do to wake this guy up. I wanna put him on trial, I want to become famous, I wanna be a, you know, rockstar lawyer.”

I, for one, will be incredibly interested to see where this goes, as they will be trudging into whole-new territory in the show. Additionally, they’ll also be incorporating aspects of the third novel, End of Watch, and I can’t wait to see how it’s all handled.

What do you think of this new character? Let us know your thoughts down below!

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