'Revolution' Season 2: More 'Desperate, Dire, and Dangerous' Than Ever

"Revolution" is going dark.

When the NBC drama returns for its second season, it picks up right where it left off — with the power turned on, and nuclear missiles headed for Atlanta and Philadelphia. Miles (Billy Burke), Rachel (Elizabeth Mitchell), and crew were desperately trying to turn electricity off again to shut down the missiles, but did they do it?

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That question is answered in the Season 2 premiere on Sept. 25. But exactly what happened remains a mystery, as the episode jumps forward six months in time.

Showrunner Eric Kripke and stars Burke, Tracy Spiridakos, and Giancarlo Esposito attended a special premiere event hosted at the United Nations, where they joined U.N. officials for a panel discussion on the issue of who has power and who doesn't.

Here are five things we learned about the Season 2 premiere at the U.N.:

1. Things get dark. Very dark.

As Kripke told Yahoo TV, "It's a more desperate, dire, and dangerous Season 2. We're back to basics — the power is gone. If anything, the world is even more destabilized than we left it."

"We're still technically at war," Burke added. "We're finding out there are larger factions at work."

Burke credited the writers for boldly taking a darker path. "We could've easily moved into more quote, unquote family fare, moving to Wednesdays at 8 o'clock. But they've gone against the grain on that."

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2. Everyone's scattered to the wind.

Miles and Rachel are in Texas, while Charlie is in the Plains Nation. Esposito told us that we'll see "Tom Neville in a refugee camp searching for his wife. You see a desperate people with no water and no food and no power."

Kripke said, "When we meet our characters, they're really shattered and they're in different areas and storylines all over the continent."

But, he added, over the season, the characters will find their way back to each other, particularly since they'll be battling a new, more dangerous foe.

Get a first look of the new season:

3. Meet the new big bad: The United States.

Or at least, the people calling themselves the United States.

"They're up against a new big bad, these people we call the Patriots, who are these United States of America guys up from Cuba," Kripke explained. "But they're not the United States — they're only wearing it as a mask, which makes them all the more insidious."

"Miles is immediately suspicious of who they are," Burke added. "And his suspicions get founded very quickly, and we find that there's a huge, huge conspiratorial thing that we had no idea about to begin with."

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4. Charlie's gone wild!

That spunky girl next door we met last season? Gone. In her place is, well, a badass.

"She's exploring her wild side, a little bit," Spiridakos laughed. "It's like when you're a teenager and you finish school and you decide to go traveling and backpacking, and you discover yourself on that journey. That's kind of what Charlie is doing — she takes off and embarks on a journey by herself, there's no one there to help, there's no Miles, there's nobody. She has to learn to fight for herself and take care of herself, and that growth is what helps make her into this strong young woman."

But she's just not fighting for herself ... Let's just say Charlie gets very up close and personal with a stranger in the season premiere.

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5. Miles and Rachel fans: You're in for a long road.

As we learned last season, these two once had an affair. That spark is still there, but it's going to take a while for them to get past their many issues — like that he's her brother-in-law and she was sort of, kind of responsible for the death of the woman he loved.

"There's always going to be that past they have to deal with," Burke noted. "We still find out bits and pieces of it this season, but as of yet, the whole story hasn't been revealed to me yet. But it gets hot and cold."

Kripke teased they will be playing the sexual tension between the characters. "They have some incredible psychological obstacles," Kripke said. "And now in the present of the story, all of the events and all of the danger keep coming up to conspire to keep them apart. All that kinda gets in the way."

Kripke joked, "It's a messy relationship. I based it on me and my wife. So, there's a lot that they need to work through before they can be together."

"Revolution" Season 2 premieres Wednesday, Sept. 25 at 8 p.m. on NBC.