I have been loving the literary qualities of the ZR writing since the first episode, and especially the wordplay and literary references (the plague started by a company named Pandora, etc.). Here’s an English-major question for you: I have been treating the second-season villain’s name as a twofer: Ark as in Noah’s Ark, and arc as in plot arc. Deliberate?

Note: Mild S2 spoilers!

Naomi Alderman, ZR co-creator and lead writer:

Nice question! The answer is that it’s partly deliberate and partly happenstance. Pandora Haze and Van Ark are both names that were requested by Kickstarter backers, but I felt they had a particular literary quality to them, and particularly nice resonances, so those were the ones I picked to do something more than “name a park” with 😉