Mrs. Davis Is Structured Like The Harry Potter Series According To Damon Lindelof
Peacock's "Mrs. Davis" is a curious combination of light-hearted fun, mind-bending twists, and heavy themes. This, after all, is a fantastic version of our world where freedom fighters and church-affiliated characters (along with actual Biblical figures) stand against a world-controlling AI — and as befits the peculiar premise, the show revels in reinventing itself with each and every episode while still staying faithful to its core.
The somewhat magical atmosphere of the show may not be a huge surprise when you hear that some of the ingredients that went into the making of the Peacock sci-fi drama have also been used in one of the biggest fantasy universes around. In an interview in the 2023 SXSW Studio, series co-creator Damon Lindelof discussed his approach to "Mrs. Davis," and named the "Harry Potter" series as a stellar example of the kind of storytelling structure he and co-creator Tara Hernandez admire.
"Tara and I are huge fans of the 'Harry Potter' books," he said. "The idea of, like, each one of those books, it presents, you know — this one's 'The Sorcerer's Stone', this one's 'The Prisoner of Azkaban'. It'll solve that issue, but you start to really become attached to the characters, and so at the end of Season 1 of 'Mrs. Davis' our job was to really invest the audience into the world and in the people who inhabit that world."
The "Harry Potter" universe might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of "Mrs. Davis," but Lindelof's comments about the way the "Harry Potter" books deal with one trouble at a time while allowing characters to grow and the bigger picture to form does seem somewhat similar to the way "Mrs. Davis" seems to be handling its business.
Planning a show like Mrs. Davis is a balancing act
Don't expect "Mrs. Davis" to go full Hogwarts, though. As Damon Lindelof noted during the interview, making a series like this — or, for that matter, any TV show — requires just the right amount of planning because there's no knowing in advance which direction the story starts pulling the people who are telling it. Lindelof compared the process to parenting a child. "We're raising our child, but then it starts to be its own person," he said. "And so, I think that the show tells you what it wants to be."
Don't expect this flexible attitude to mean that Lindelof and Tara Hernandez plan to wing it through "Mrs. Davis," though. On the contrary, they have a very clear arc for the first season. "And so, while we had a really specific design — particularly, there's a lot of mystery infused with 'Mrs. Davis' — there are questions that you have, we'll have coming out of the first two or three episodes, and then when you move into the back half of the season you have to start answering those questions," Lindelof said.
For people who have already binged the four episodes of "Mrs. Davis" that dropped on Peacock on April 20, the confirmation that answers will be coming is no doubt welcome news ... even though said answers may be arriving at a leisurely pace, due to the remaining season's weekly release schedule.