The Tick Season 2: Peter Serafinowicz Is Grateful for His New Costume

When all 10 episodes of The Tick Season 2 premiere on Amazon Prime this Friday, viewers will be able to see star Peter Serafinowicz do something he’s never been able to do as the titular big blue superhero: move his head. 

“The costume was a big improvement on the previous year,” Serafinowicz says. “I could move my head. I could bend my legs. I could do lots of things.” 

The costume that The Tick dons (in a rather creative way that we won’t spoil here) in The Tick Season 2’s first episode is now the third version of the Tick-suit that Serafinowicz has worn. Serafinowicz (Shaun of the Dead, Guardians of the Galaxy) became the second actor to step into the live-action into role of Ben Edlund’s indie comic book hero back in 2016 with Amazon Prime’s The Tick. The pilot was produced as part of Amazon’s short-lived program in which viewers could vote on which pilots they wanted to see picked up. Once The Tick won, the first order of business for the show was to change the waxy and angular costume Serafinowicz had to be stuffed into.

The costume for the remainder of the first season was an improvement but producers were determined to make The Tick Season 2 an even more tolerable experience for the British actor who adopts a deep, convincing American superhero timber for the role. The show brought on Jose Fernandez of Ironhead Studios. Fernandez has previously crafted costumes for live-action depictions of Thor, Spider-Man, Batman, Wolverine, and more. Serafinowicz says he’s happy with the change, but at the end of the day no costume is inherently comfortable. 

“No matter how well-designed it is. It’s ultimately a giant, blue suit that has to be, basically, stuck to me. There’s not getting around a lot of that,” he says.

If Serafinowicz is destined to suffer for his art, at least it’s good art. Despite an increasingly crowded superhero TV landscape (not to mention an increasingly crowded superhero everything landscape), The Tick stands out thanks to its central character’s sunny disposition and the show’s strong sense of storytelling technique. 

In The Tick Season 2, the world of superherodom grows for The Tick and Arthur (Griffin Newman) when superhero oversight agency, AEGIS, comes to town. The Tick and Arthur must solve the case of a bank-robbing lobster all while dealing with their own increasing public profiles and the threat of governmental regulation.

According to Serafinowicz, The Tick is able to thrive because it never loses the sight of the human story at its core (even if The Tick might not be, strictly speaking, human).

further reading: The Tick: Amazon’s Adaptation Fights and Laughs in the Face of Danger

“I don’t see this as a superhero show,” Serafinowicz says. “I feel like that’s the backdrop for it. It’s the world they’re in, but they don’t talk about superhero-ing all the time. They just go about their lives and that’s what I love about it.”

That’s not to say that Serafinowicz isn’t aware that fans love their superheroes. The Tick Season 2 premiered to a packed audience at Wonder Con. Serafinowicz says he was blown away by the response. 

“Seeing all these people waiting in line to come and get a signed poster, and it really means a lot to them. They’ll wait in line for hours. When people tell us how much they’re into the show, it just means everything.” 

The Tick does have a lot of devoted fans, dating back to the character’s time as a comic book store mascot. But perhaps those audiences were just blown away by the character being able to move his head and bend his knees.

The Tick Season 2 premieres on Amazon Prime on Friday, April 5.

Alec Bojalad is TV Editor at Den of Geek and TCA member. Read more of his stuff here. Follow him at his creatively-named Twitter handle @alecbojalad