Fans Are Getting Excited Over This First Look At The 4400 Reboot

The CW's reboot of "4400" was greenlit straight to series earlier this year (via Deadline) and is coming to television screens during the upcoming fall season. Today, Entertainment Weekly has revealed some first-look photos that give a sense of what the series is going to look like, along with some new information about the show. 

Based on the 2004-2007 series that aired on USA Network that was called "The 4400," this new version will take place in the present day. Like the original, it follows the mysterious return of 4,400 people who disappeared from different previous times. They have no memory of where they've been or what happened to them, and they haven't aged. Back on Earth in 2021, though, some start to develop supernatural powers. As they try to re-assimilate back into regular life while figuring out why they were abducted, the government tries to understand the potential threat created by their presence. 

The original series dealt with a drug called promicin and eventually revealed that the 4400 had been taken by future Earth residents and not aliens, of which there were separate, conflicting factions. It's unclear at this point if The CW's version of the show will follow the same plot points, but what is clear is that the original show ended on a cliffhanger that had fans upset about the lack of resolution. The new images show that there will definitely be a focus on a more diverse set of characters  — not just in the present day, but in their original times — but don't reveal a whole lot else just yet. That's not unexpected: Although the network revealed three video teasers in July, they too were short on information. 

However, some of the creative folks involved in bringing back the show have a bit more information to provide context to the newly-revealed images. Co-showrunner Ariana Jackson told EW that the series was very consciously set in this time frame. "Where we are now feels like a very pivotal time in our nation's history — it was really interesting to examine how we got here through all these people from different eras," Jackson said. "It feels like a really interesting time to set it in to really examine how we came to be here and now, a time where we're really seeing a lot of the cracks in our society and in what we built."

The show spends more time in the kidnapped people's original eras in order to highlight that collective journey, to illustrate the continuing pertinence of issues the members of the 4400 had to deal with before. Co-showrunner Sunil Nayar said, "What I think is really compelling about what this show is, as opposed to lots of other sci-fi shows that are about world-building, this one is firmly grounded in the present, which I think is really a different kind of context for shows like this."

Fans seem to be tentatively on board. The show has stayed popular and gained new fans because of its availability on Netflix. Old fans — as well as some of those newer ones who've just discovered it, some by way of its similarity to "Manifest" — are still mad about the cancellation if social media commentary is any indication. For these viewers, the opportunity for a new network to do it right might have them more than ready to watch the new version. Anticipation has been high already ("I'm so ready," said @chrissysprinkle over Twitter), and this new information may help create more a buzz that leads to better viewership when the show debuts on Monday, Oct. 25 at 9 p.m. ET. If so, perhaps that cliffhanger might be resolved someday, after all.