Actor Grant Bowler, who plays the lead in SyFy and Trion’s transmedia sci-fi vehicle Defiance, has told GamerHub that the show and the game are finally finding their stride. Defiance recently had one of its first major plot convergence moments. A plague that started afflicting characters in the game, where people fight aliens in a gutted, post-apocalyptic San Francisco, eventually spread east and found its way to the residents of a similarly gutted St. Louis, where the TV show is set. Bowler told GamerHub the event turned out to be their “aha” moment.

“The press, in particular, and critics are starting to go, ‘oh now we see’,” said Bowler.

Defiance had a rocky start with the TV show debuting to mostly ho-hum reviews. That was followed by a game launch marred by server issues and glitches that affected the online multiplayer game. It seems to have since found a footing with fans. SyFy has green lit the show’s second season. According to Metacritic scores, the game is faring much better post release. User scores for the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions are scoring in the 70’s, a good 10-plus points above what critics scored the game at launch.

“Convergence was always going to be a slow burn,” Bowler told GamerHub. “You can’t do it all at once without handing over the show completely to the gamers, which is a bad idea. It may sound like fun, but you’re going to end up with a million people around the world going, ‘now hit him on the head again.’”

Bowler hinted that the second season is where converged storytelling might really click.

“I know that our writers and our producers and the Trion guys are right now all sitting in rooms and they’re working out season two. And that’s where it really gets going. Now that the game is up, now that the show is up, now that we’ve seen each as a standalone product and we’ve seen convergence start to happen, now we can get the ball rolling,” he said.

In the second part of his interview with GamerHub, Bowler talks about ways the game can bridge the gap between seasons one and two as the show goes into off-season hiatus.“For me, it actually keeps down my homesickness for the show because I’m running around in the same gear, using the same weapons, driving around the same vehicles, it’s the same world,” Bowler said.