“We talked in the writers room about what we wanted to bring to Lady Silence’s character. Our version of her is probably the biggest departure from the book. In the novel, she never has a tongue, so she never speaks. She functions in the book as a kind of, possibly mystical, possibly frightening ‘other.’ We wanted to turn her character into a full protagonist on her own terms, and not have her story subservient to any of the male characters. At the end of the novel, Lady Silence and Crozier marry and have children. We very strictly didn’t want her arc to be that she’s the wife or the girlfriend, or the lover of any of our characters. We didn’t want to simply use a female character as a sexual character or a romantic interest. We wanted to see if we could pull off a season of television where a female character didn’t have to engage on any of those levels: she was engaging with the story in a way that she’s Crozier’s equal as the season goes on. They are both captains who weren’t ready to be captains when they were promoted through this disaster, and they both lost their ships, and they both have to pay the price of that at the end of the show. If one wanted a final coda to a season of TV that was about unpacking the consequences of toxic masculinity, I think it’s a pretty provocative way to end the show, and it’s definitely not how the book ends.”

— David Kajganich on Season 1 of The Terror (x)