by DominionV5 (who is responsible for all errors and omissions)

On July 7, Vaun Wilmott entertained fans for about an hour with a live Periscope video chat, from his office in LA. The video of the chat was up on the Periscope website for 24 hours, but was thereafter deleted. Below you can find a few notes on what was covered during the chat, and luckily it was recorded by Karolina from the Dominionfans Tumblr. If you’d rather watch it, you can find it here: Part 1 – Part 2.

We got a 360 virtual tour of the room, which included two clocks (Cape Town time and LA time), a pile of what look like scripts, and a look at some of the Dominion concept art and even fanart he had printed. Either Vaun has the world’s largest coffee mug or his computer camera does really wild close-up selfies!

Many familiar Dominion fan twitter handles were seen among those in attendance, along with many new friends – welcome to the fandom!

There were many questions about Dominion in general and about Legion. Vaun confirmed that there would be 13 episodes this season. He was also very appreciative of the fans, especially for all their passion about the show. He confirmed that he really likes interacting with fans and hopes to do more chats like this one in the future.

Among the nuggets of info were the following (sorry I only took notes on the answers that I was personally interested in):

• Alex is NOT getting a dog. Wrangling animals is an added problem, and with Dominion’s really fast shooting schedule, this would be difficult.
• He really appreciates William Shatner’s support and was going to try to see him at SDCC. He asked Shatner to live tweet the premiere but he had a conflict with another event.
• He wants to leave heaven in our imaginations.
• There was a good conversation about who should play Father (if he were ever shown). Morgan Freeman was suggested.
• We will learn more about Michael’s relationship with Father this season (and about why Father left).
• Vaun and the writers poured everything they had into Season 2. They went BIG. If there is a Season 3 he will have other things to show us.
• The network and Vaun work very well together, but there were some things they asked him to change and he thinks they were good choices.
• It was Lucifer’s hand on Michael’s shoulder in the infamous beach picture. Lucifer was going to be a cliffhanger but it was changed. Lucifer was never cast. Vaun decided to go in a different direction.
• Vaun said that he doesn’t get to South Africa as much as he would like and, although he loves it there, LA is home. The plane ride over is a killer, and one reason why he doesn’t go over as much as he would like.
• He laughed when he was asked if he would be seen on the show. He said maybe in Season 3, but was not committing to it. He did say he could have done a cameo as an eight-ball this season but when he was over there recently while filming was going on he was a “zombie” with the worse jet lag ever.
• Nuclear weapons are still around in the world of Dominion, but notice that the angels don’t use human weapons of mass destruction. They view the earth as Father’s paradise and resent what humans have done to it. They wouldn’t destroy the environment.
• Outside the cities (where the Eight Balls are) there are places that are actually better than before the war in some ways [was he talking about Mallory?]
• Angels can die, but we don’t know what that means with Father gone.
• Entombing angels in amber is like putting them in cryogenic stasis. It preserves their bodies.
• One of his favorite scenes from Season 1 was Michael and Gabriel’s conversation in Vega [about their birth].
• God is the ultimate absentee father. Note that many of the characters have father issues. This is a central theme. Family issues.
• Gabriel is all emotions, “burning hot”, while Michael is the logical one, cold, but underneath the surface he has a lot of emotions.

I transcribed the following three answers to three of my questions from the playback before it was deleted. They have been edited to omit pauses, etc. Any errors are mine.

Me: Is Cormac McCarthy’s The Road an inspiration?
Vaun: You know, I love his writing, that was a little too bleak for me. I always like to think that in horrible situations mankind would rise and do a little better than that. That was a little hard to take. So I wouldn’t say that is was an inspiration. Certainly post-apocalyptic stuff is, but he’s a brilliant writer.

Me: Which character would you consider your personal POV character?
Vaun: That’s an interesting question. I would say, you know they’re all facets of my personality and of the personalities of the writers. So I wouldn’t say anyone spec- uh, probably Michael and Chris – and Alex – are probably, you know, the most of my point of view in terms of my personal point of view. Although, again, they’re all different aspects. I think we all draw on our different sides of our personality to write different characters. They all do and mean different things, so I really can’t say that there’s any really, you know, singular ones that are purely my point of view.

Me: What is so special about empyrean steel?
Vaun: Empyrean steel is basically celestial steel. It’s steel that actually comes from heaven. So when they’ve come down here in bodies their armor and their swords and their weapons are all basically from heaven. So they have, they’re of different properties.