Prison Break fans have had an exciting few months as more and more news about the upcoming Fox revival has been released. The plot is still mostly shrouded in mystery, but there have still been details emerging worth getting excited about. Now, we know what the revival will be based on, and it's a pretty unexpected source. The ten episodes of the Prison Break revival will be based on Homer's classic epic poem The Odyssey. Series creator Paul Scheuring had this to say about why he used a Greek epic as inspiration for the next chapter of Michael Scofield's story on Prison Break:
It's ultimately a story about somebody coming back to life. The emotional heart of it is that he left behind a wife and a son he's never seen before. [I thought] 'Hey, wait, isn't that The Odyssey?'
Paul Scheuring revealed the Odyssey inspiration in a chat with EW, and it paints an intriguing picture of what's to come when Prison Break returns to the airwaves. The Odyssey is the tale of a Greek king who gets sidetracked on a journey home from the Trojan War due to some serious missteps and offenses to the gods. It actually took Odysseus ten years of journeying to make it back to Ithaca from Troy. Odysseus was gone from home for twenty years in total before returning to a 20-year old son and wife who believed him dead. He had to kill a small horde of suitors to his wife when he finally showed up in Ithaca again.
It's pretty safe to say that Prison Break won't follow every single step of The Odyssey when it comes to Michael Scofield's return to his family after they believed him dead. At the very least, the show will probably leave out any offenses to Greek deities. Still, Paul Scheuring is taking steps to make it very clear that the revival will have some of its roots in The Odyssey. He may not be Homer, but he can use some of the same story elements. Odysseus used the name Outis in a portion of his adventures, and he made a stop in the land of Ogydia; Michael Scofield will go by the name Kaniel Outis, and he'll make his grand debut in the revival while stuck in the prison called Ogydia.
We'll have to wait and see if Michael's rendezvous with his wife Sara and son Michael at all parallel Odysseus' rendezvous with Penelope and Telemachus. Michael hasn't been gone for twenty years, and Sara probably isn't in a position where she is expected to re-marry, so hopefully Michael won't go on a killing spree when he makes it back to his family.
Of course, the most significant relationship of the original run of Prison Break was the one between Michael and his brother Lincoln. Paul Scheuring didn't reveal just what elements of The Odyssey may or may not be present in any plot between the brothers. Odysseus didn't spend the Trojan War trying to bust a criminal brother out of Troy; the Prison Break revival will undoubtedly have to get more original for Michael and Lincoln's next interactions.
Unfortunately, we still have a while to wait before the Prison Break revival hits the airwaves in midseason 2017. Hopefully we'll get to see Prison Break stars Wentworth Miller and Dominic Purcell interacting once more on The CW. The two were regulars in Season 1 of superhero series Legends of Tomorrow. Their characters were distinctly separate as of the end of the season, but there's a chance that they'll be once screen together to whet Prison Break fans' appetites until the revival finally airs.
