Let's get the resurrection of Dr. Sara Tancredi out of the way first. For months, it's been known that actress Sarah Wayne Callies is reprising her role on “Prison Break," even though her character was decapitated in the third season.
Remember the head in the box that made Lincoln Burrows (Dominic Purcell) recoil? Well, in tonight's two-hour premiere, fans will learn, among other things, that it was dark in the garage, and a revolted Lincoln didn't exactly stare at the severed head. More important, viewers will see Sara alive and not so well but reunited with her love, Michael Scofield (Wentworth Miller).
"It's certainly an exciting thing to find that one is not decapitated after all," Callies joked. Michael and Sara's impossible love -- chronicled on the Web and featured on YouTube -- still eludes happily-ever-after in the fourth season, but they are as together as “MiSa” can be.
"Frankly, I think the fans convinced the writers to make sure that she came back," Callies said. "I think it teaches us that those old ideas of what makes a guy's show and what makes a girl's show don't work so much anymore because it's not just the women who are interested in relationships and it's not just the guys who are interested in things blowing up and being chased."
Miller said he was pleased that producers chose not to delay Sara's return for a few episodes. But that would have been out of character for a series that stands out for its fast, intense, often logic-bending storytelling and its self-reinvention every year. The Fox drama has had a steady following but lost more than 1 million viewers last season.
"You're really betting on the ingenuity of the writers," said Marcy Ross, Fox executive vice president of current programming. "But it is so challenging: Why would a network pick it up? Other than the fact that we really like it and there's a core fan base that we want to keep speaking to."
Only seven months have passed since Michael robbed a bank to get himself incarcerated at Fox River State Penitentiary near Chicago, so that he could break out his brother, Lincoln, who was to be executed. They escaped with the help of six prisoners and spent all of the second season far-flung through Texas and the world. Last season, a few of them landed in a Panamanian jail until Michael, again, was able to break out, motivated by his desire to avenge Sara's murder.
