Spoiler Warning: The following article contains spoilers for the Spartacus: House of Ashur premiere. Please exercise extreme caution…
After what seems like years of waiting for it to happen, Spartacus: House of Ashur has finally arrived on the 2025 TV schedule, and I’m hooked! The new Starz original series, which offers a big what-if scenario for one of the franchise’s most divisive characters, kicked off with one hell of an opening sequence that included a brief yet intriguing cameo that longtime fans will surely enjoy.
In the premiere episode, Nick E. Tarabay’s Ashur, who was decapitated on Spartacus: Vengeance, is visited by the spectre of Lucretia, the cunning wife of his former master. So, when I caught up with series creator Steven S. DeKnight and Tarabay, I had to ask about getting Lucy Lawless to reprise her iconic role, to which they replied:
- Steven S. DeKnight: It was so great to work with Lucy again. I mean, she's just amazing. I think it was the perfect way to get back into the world and set up the what-if.
- Nick E. Tarabay: Yeah, Lucy’s a lot of fun to work with.
Though Lucretia appears in only one scene, the brief yet captivating return of Lucy Lawless’ character did a wonderful job of setting the stage for what’s to come in the series. Appearing as a ghostly guide through the underworld, the wife of Quintus Lentulus Batiatus, once saved by Ashur many years ago, offers the dead man a “new reality, uncoupled from history.”
After the encounter, Ashur is thrust into a new life, one where he sided with Crassus and turned on the rebels instead of siding with Spartacus and in return was given a higher social status and a group of gladiators.
When I asked Tarabay what it was like to be back playing Ashur again after all these years, he described the experience as being “magical” and that it felt like “going back home,” adding:
Oh, dude, it was magical. It was really nice because it felt like as soon as I was back in New Zealand and as soon as I was reading the script and seeing the sets again, it felt like, you know, it's like what do they call it, riding a bike again? Yeah, it really worked. … It was really nice. It's more challenging this season, for sure. The stakes are higher and the drama is deeper. But other than that, it was lovely to be back. It's like going back home. It was really nice.
Though Spartacus: House of Ashur tells a different story on a separate timeline, where the events of the main franchise never happened, the spinoff is full of the intense violence fans have come to know and love over the years. It hasn’t reached the body count of the original just yet, but we’re only two episodes in at this point.
The first two episodes of Spartacus: House of Ashur are streaming on Starz (those who snagged that Black Friday deal are probably happy about now), with subsequent chapters being released on Fridays.
