So Defiance‘s San Diego Comic Con panel was earlier today, and we got a few glimpses of the future, and some very mixed signals about whether the show will continue. Spoilers of varying significance for the rest of season 2 ahead.

Among the things revealed today about season 2:

• Kenya Rosewater is apparently not only not dead, but will return in this week’s episode and be around for more than just this once, suggesting she’s not some kind of hallucination. Death is cheap in Defiance, unless you’re a Bioman. RIP Churchill!
• There will be flashbacks of the Votans from before they left for Earth, back in their home system. It’ll be our first real glimpse at what they were like before boarding the Arks.
• Rafe’s ex-wife, Pilar, is returning to town, played by Linda Hamilton of Terminator fame. If you recall, Rafe’s son Quentin went off searching for her last season, when he discovered that she was not actually dead. Will he be back too?
• Nolan will get another chance at the Jack Bauer thing when tasked with stopping a “terrorist attack” in New York. It looks like some sort of beam weapon that’s naturally derived from Votan tech, and the editing in the trailer suggests a connection between it and Irzu.
• Speaking of which, this whole Irzu thing is coming to a head soon, and it appears that the “2 by 2” theory is correct–a theory which states Irzu is getting Irisa to kill/save a male and a female of each Votan species from which to rebuild the world. Irisa seems to be buying into the crazy and explains why she won’t be saving any humans. To me, that suggests that Irzu’s planning to destroy the world and restart it with Votan life only, the nanomachines being a way to rebuild each species after destruction. Guess we’ll see how this pans out.
• E-Rep won’t be going anywhere at the end of the season. Full-on war with the Votanis Collective awaits?
• One last big hint dropped: there could be further Votan races that haven’t yet been mentioned or introduced. Apparently the security on the Arks was taking a nap when boarding time came around.
• There could be some Defiance comics coming out to further explore the backstory.
• Season 3 spoilers? There are plans to have an entire flashback episode set during the Pale Wars.
• Which brings us to the bad signs: according to HuffPo (where you can view the trailer), the schedule’s getting shuffled around, with 2 episodes per night for the last two weeks. That’s the same kind of shuffling and burn-off that Syfy pulls on shows they’re getting ready to cancel, like with Caprica a few years back. Between talk of season 3 and this, it’s hard to know what to think. It seems like Syfy might still be backing the show, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the rug is pulled out from under them soon. On the other hand, there’s been some change in leadership since then, and Syfy seems more committed to actually producing science fiction now, so maybe they won’t be so quick to give up. It’s really up in the air at this point.

Conclusions? Well, I couldn’t care less about Rafe’s ex-wife, but having someone experienced like Linda Hamilton playing her will make it more interesting. I also wasn’t exactly eager to see Kenya returning; I feel like it’s more interesting having this bomb sitting there, waiting to go off, than to have her alive. She didn’t exactly win me over last season, but with all the improvements this year, maybe it won’t be so bad. And it does look like the truth of what happened to her will come out, inciting reactions from Amanda and Datak. The future of Defiance remains to be seen, but the plans for season 3 sound interesting, so let’s hope it gets renewed, eh?

UPDATE: Syfy’s twitter account has confirmed that the schedule change is to avoid going up against NFL games on other networks that night. We can all breathe a sigh of relief now.