“Dead Boy Detectives” stars highlight their favorite cases of the season

Each episode of Netflix's new supernatural procedural is different from the last. George Rexstrew, Jayden Revri, Kassius Nelson and Yuyu Kitamura pick the best.

Even after death, there are still mysteries to solve. That’s the premise behind Netflix’s new supernatural series Dead Boy Detectives, which combines the magical world-building of  Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman universe with the case-of-the-week structure of a police procedural. So when Entertainment Weekly interviewed the Dead Boy Detectives cast ahead of the series premiere, we had to ask for their favorite cases from the show so far.

They each had a different answer, which was in keeping with showrunners Steve Yockey and Beth Schwartz’s approach to the season.

“We wanted each one to be different so it doesn't feel so formulaic,” Schwartz tells EW. “The case doesn't have to be at the very top of the episode, we can do different things with the structure, and we can have anything from a sea monster to a guy that murders his entire family over and over again. Creatively, that allowed the writers’ room to just go crazy with ideas of what kind of cases these guys could solve.”

Yockey points to episode 5, “The Case of the Two Dead Dragons," as an example of changing up the structure. The central murder mystery is solved with 20 minutes left, time that is then dedicated to a disastrous date for Jenny the Butcher (Briana Cuoco). For other reasons, that episode was the favorite for George Rexstrew, who plays Edwin Paine.

“My favorite case is episode 5 for two main reasons,” Rexstrew says. “Firstly, it's the first time you get to see Edwin out in the wild, and it was really fun to shoot in an American high school. It really spoke to the Americana in me. And secondly, it's such a pivotal episode when it comes to Edwin's journey throughout the season. He experiences this really profound epiphany at the end of the episode under the canopy with Charles. It was a really special scene to shoot, and I'm really proud of it.”

But while Edwin has a big personal realization in episode 5, his detective partner Charles Rowland (Jayden Revri) has his own intense experience a few episodes earlier. Episode 3, “The Case of the Devlin House,” takes inspiration from The Shining with its story of a jealous dad who murdered his whole family. The ghosts are now stuck in a time loop, doomed to repeat the horrible massacre over and over, and that unlocks something in Charles.

“That’s when Charles really dives into his past,” Revri says of the third chapter. “Like George said about episode 5 being his big pivotal moment, I think episode 3 is a big pivotal moment for Charles. It's also so eerie and scary!”

Although Rexstrew and Revri responded most to episodes featuring big moments for their characters, Kassius Nelson (who plays their human ally, psychic medium Crystal Palace) preferred one that barely featured her at all.

“My favorite is episode 7, which is funny because I'm in [it] the least,” Nelson says. “I was interested in seeing how we would show Hell and what that would look like. Because of the way that Steve writes and even the way that the set design is constructed, it's really interesting how Gothic some elements can be, and the ultimate challenge is to see how Hell would look. It’s the place that's teased a lot in the series, and Edwin talks about how horrible it was for him so I knew Crystal would be like, ‘Alright, let's see how bad it is.’ And it's bad!”

Although the Dead Boy Detective Agency started out as just Edwin and Charles, it’s not really complete until both Crystal and Niko Sasaki (Yuyu Kitamura) join the team. Episode 4, “The Case of the Lighthouse Leapers,” is where that happens.

Rexstrew calls Niko "the architect of love on the show," so it makes sense that Kitamura's favorite episode would be one that involved a lot of teamwork.

“I loved episode 4 because it was the first time Niko got to go on a case and experience that with them,” Kitamura says. “And we were up against Vancouver weather the whole time, so I also felt like that was the first time that I felt we as a cast really came together to just f---ing push through. That was the day that everyone was constantly giving it their all. So it was a great, great time.”

Season 1 of Dead Boy Detectives is streaming now on Netflix.

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Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.