‘Archive 81’ Star Dina Shihabi on That Family Secret, How Melody and Dan Could Connect in a Season 2
Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterSPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not yet watched the finale of Netflix’s “Archive 81.”Melody Pendras (Dina Shihabi) spends the majority of the first season of Netflix’s “Archive 81” separated from the show’s other key characters, given that the camcorder-toting Visser resident’s story takes place in the ’90s and her work is being studied in the present day by archivist Dan Turner (Mamoudou Athie).But in the final moments of the “Archive 81” Season 1 finale, Melody becomes a literal blast from the past, as she is dragged through a portal from The Otherworld dimension she has been trapped in for decades by cult-leader Samuel (Evan Jonigkeit) and falls out in front of her long-lost mother, Julia Bennett/Bobbi (Jacqueline Antaramian), and Dan’s best friend, Mark (Matt McGorry). Samuel suspiciously doesn’t come through with her and Dan is nowhere to be seen, having accidentally exited god/demon Kaelego’s realm in the post-Visser-apartment fire ’90s, rather than the present-day entrance he went through in his attempt to rescue Melody.