‘Bates Motel’ season 2 spoilers: Carlton Cuse on key questions asked by Norman, Norma Bates

Now that we know that “Bates Motel” will be returning to A&E with new episodes on Monday, March 3, the focus can now shift somewhat to questions related to the plot. For example, what in the world is going to happen next with some of these characters?

Norma and Norman Bates are still the focuses of the show, and so it only seems appropriate that for this article, we put the focus on them. Executive producer Carlton Cuse spoke recently to Entertainment Weekly about some general themes that they are going to face off against, and questions of identity are probably going to be high on this list:

”The sort of thematic of the second season is, ‘Who am I?’ For Norma, ‘Am I entitled to the life I’ve always dreamed of having?’ For Norman it’s, ‘Who am I?’ as he becomes more aware of the darkness inside him. There’s sweet charming Norman and then there’s this darker creature that inhabits his soul.”

That darker creature may have really burst out during the season 1 finale, based on what we saw with that gruesome killing of his teacher. The question that we just have to ask ourselves now is whether or not he was really the guilty party behind that, or if that was someone else who played a part. Hopefully, there will be an answer revealed pretty early on during season 2. The structure of the next chapter is going to be pretty similar, at least in that we’re getting ten episodes to see a story told, which to us certainly feels perfect. That is enough time to get our toes wet, but also little enough that we are consistently hungry for more.