Last May, 2013, following the successful debut of House of Cards, Netflix announced that it was bringing Sense8, the first foray into television by the Wachowski siblings (Andy and Lana Wachowski), exclusively to its members to watch instantly in late 2014.

Described as “a gripping global tale of minds linked and souls hunted,” Netflix will debut a 10-episode season one of Sense8, which was inspired by a late night conversation the Wachowskis had years ago, about the ways technology simultaneously unites and divides us.

Since that announcement, details on the project have been sketchy. Both Netflix and the Wachowskis have been silent about the project, keeping it underwraps.

Not anymore, thanks to a TV Line scoop, which provides some details about the series’ plot and characters that S&A readers should find interesting.

– First the sci-fi drama will center on 8 different people living in 8 different places around the world: somewhere in the UK, Seoul, Mumbai, Nairobi, Berlin, Mexico City, San Francisco and Chicago. Without knowing further details, the Nairobi-set story gets our attention, whatever it will be. But that’s not all.

– Second, the 8 people, who are called “visionaries,” will be connected by a “shared violent vision.” Although we don’t know what exactly that vision is.

– Third, some entity (we aren’t told whether it’s alien, supernatural, or humanoid, just that it’s an “entity”) is trying to kill them off. 

– Fourth, and here is where it gets even more interesting, among the series regular characters are: a closeted Mexican telenovela hunk, an Icelandic party girl, a German safe-cracker, a Korean businesswoman, an African bus driver, a transgender American blogger, and maybe most intriguing, is a character named Jonas, who’s described as an African American with magical powers of some sort, who appears to all 8 “visionaries.” Jonas has an evil counterpart, named Mr. Whispers, although there’s no description of that character.

So we have an “African bus driver” as one of the “visionaries,” who’s probably the star of the story set in Nairobi, Kenya, we can only guess And we have an African American character named Jonas, with magical powers (we don’t know what those powers are yet), who appears to all 8 “visionaries,” with his evil counterpart, suggesting (speculation on my part) that Jonas maybe is trying to save them, or unite them (the 8 visionaries) because, maybe in unity, there’s some collective power that comes out of that; While Mr Whispers, his evil half, is the “entity” who’s trying to kill them off, because he doesn’t want them to connect and give birth to this power that their unification would create.

Things that make you go hmm…

No other information is available at this time, so let the speculation begin.

This immediately makes me think of the TV series Heroes.

None of the roles has yet been cast, but we now know that there will be at least 2 lead roles for people of African descent in the series.

But say what you will about the Wachowskis’ films since The Matrix, which haven’t all been hits, I really appreciate their continued interest in exploring speculative fiction in their filmmaking, and taking risks with their storytelling. I also appreciate the push for diversity in their characters and casting. 

Without that drive and interest, we may never have gotten The Matrix.

Sense8 doesn’t actually start shooting until June, so we probably won’t see it until 2015. Casting announcements should be made in the next few months.