Prison Breakdown: Sara Lives!

Sara lives!

Lucky attendees of the Prison Break panel at Comic-Con were treated to two very exciting sights, even though series lead Wentworth Miller was a no-show. The first was a look at the first act of Prison Break's fourth season, launching this fall, and the second was seeing Sarah Wayne Callies herself, last seen on the series tied to a chair as the captive of the sadistic Gretchen... before her head was mailed to Lincoln Burrows (Dominic Purcell).

What a difference a year makes. Last year, Callies was on her way out of Prison Break, killed off-screen, but now she's making her triumphant return to the series in a story arc that will give the actress an extremely meaty, emotionally complex role to sink her teeth into.

As for the story behind Sara's, er, resurrection, we learn in the opening act of Prison Break's first episode this fall that Gretchen didn't actually kill Michael's love Sara, who managed to escape Gretchen's clutches. With no leverage over Michael, she used the head of a cadaver to take Sara's place as a warning. Meanwhile, Michael appears to be out to avenge Sara's death and he's starting with Gretchen, whom he catches in the midst of a high-stakes robbery at Los Angeles' Roosevelt Hotel, with Whistler pulling quite a James Bond move in killing the seller of a disk containing data that The Company wants to get their hands on... and duplicating the disk itself for a third party. Catching them with the police en route, Michael pulls a gun on Gretchen, who tells him the truth about Sara's "death."

So where is Sara Tancredi then? The mystery of where she's been and what happened to her will be a major element to Prison Break's fourth season. Ten months have passed since the events of Season Three and Sara will be a very changed person when we next see her. "Sara is coming back a very different person," said Callies. Whatever happened to her over the last few months "makes the Kellerman-bathtub stuff," as Callies dubbed her character's attempted murder at the hands of Agent Kellerman, look like child's play.

What we will see is an exploration of what happens when someone "experiences trauma and then tries to come back and love someone," said Callies.

It's an interesting approach but I have to say that I was more intrigued by what Dominic Purcell was doing on his phone the entire panel than by these announcements. Maybe he was texting Wentworth to tell him what he was missing out on? Hmmm.

Prison Break's fourth season kicks off this fall on FOX.