What is that large, bulky object floating silently in space in this week’s particularly spooky episode? SYFY‘S The Ark? Er, it’s probably nothing – just a regular abandoned death ship that’s been looted and taken over by some insanely unpredictable madman.

Yes, The Ark This week, they intrepidly crept to the edges of horror territory and infiltrated the damaged spaceship Ark 3, only to find that the ship they had last left (because most of Ark 3’s crew members were actually Was) has mysteriously changed during their absence. When Alicia Nevins (Stacey Read) and the gang spy on interior footage from a hacked camera system aboard the secure Ark One, they realize that something is definitely different about the ill-fated Ark 3 as they make another visit to pick up some much-needed spare parts.

However, what they find when they arrive would be a sci-fi horror game like Dead space or a horror film inspired directly from the Foreigner Franchise. So what is Really with all those zombie-looking inhabitants of Ark 3? Let’s dive in and find out!

Gruesome space tour: The Ark enters a spooky “Museum of Death”

“Museum of Death” is the title of the 5th episode of the second season of this week of The Arkand it’s a name that perfectly captures the general mood. Led by Captain Sharon Garnet (Christie Burke), a core team of Ark One crew members commute to the stranded Ark 3 to investigate why the silent ship has seemingly magically repopulated – you know, with real living people. After all, the last time she’d been there, the place had been reduced to little more than a space grave, the permanent resting place for dozens of Ark 3 casualties who fell victim to an invasion ordered by Evelyn Maddox (Jelena Stupljanin), the menacing leader of the renegade (and currently illicitly absent) Ark 15.

As it turns out, almost everyone on the Ark 3 is actually Is still dead – although their bodies are covered by something (or someone) to make it look like they’re just going about their daily duties. It’s truly eerie to see Brice (Richard Fleeshman), Garnet, and the rest of the gang shining flashlights into the unflinching eyes of all these prematurely decayed space corpses – until, of course, one of them frighteningly comes to life and scurries off into hiding.

This not-so-dead stowaway turns out to be none other than the long-lost brother of Eva (Tiana Upcheva), Brice’s devoted lover and the Ark One’s key engineer. Left behind on Earth after Eva escaped her dying home planet aboard the Ark One, the poor guy has been scouring space in search of his sister ever since. And judging by his completely deteriorated mental state (like, who Really hangs around on an abandoned spaceship long enough to stage all the dead bodies?), well… he definitely had a rough time.

In this week’s episode After the Ark After the show, Upcheva said the whole spooky vibe wasn’t just a magic trick for the audience. Walking around a dimly lit ship deck crammed with ice-cold “dead” bodies, she admitted, feels just as strange on the real set as it does on screen.

“I think Christie and I had so much fun – I know how that sounds! – but it Was really fun just walking through all the “dead” people. It was so real”said Upcheva, whose character reached her emotional breaking point in this week’s episode due to a fraternal family reunion that ended tragically abruptly.

“It was so scary at the same time,” she added, “…and the tension they created and the lighting that just evoked the atmosphere – it was incredible! … We really applauded them (those incredibly stiff ‘dead’ actors) at the end of the day. Because it was so hard to sit still for so long. And they just did an incredible job. I remember we had flashlights pointed right at their eyeballs and it was like, ‘Oh my God – I’m going to go blind – totally blind!’ And the makeup artists just mastered the whole task. So it was really, really incredible.”

Other ways to die: The alternative ideas of death that are The Ark‘s writers’ room

After stealing a shuttle from the Eastern Federation (an enigmatic Earth faction whose name, at least so far, has not appeared too often The Ark), Eva’s brother has more or less lost his mind due to the loneliness on board the Ark 3. No one knows exactly how long he has been working his crazy magic on the stranded ship and befriending its partially mummified human relics… but by the time Eva meets him, he has already gone so far off the track that he has “married” one of the corpses, and he clearly has no plans to leave his dead adoptive family any time soon.

“I love horror,” said episode co-writer India Sage Wilson After the Ark“So this is kind of a combination of two of my favorite things… having that horror moment where they walk through and see all these dead bodies is just so crazy and funny!”

Eva’s brother ultimately dies in space when he is struck by explosive debris during a questionable maneuver to redirect the ship while fleeing the safety of the Ark One to return to his terminally ill zombie friends on the Ark 3. But death by debris, which Eva witnesses herself in a heartbreaking moment near the end of the episode, wasn’t the only deadly scenario the writers had in mind when they gave her brother a one-off appearance on the series.

“I think there was a slightly different (draft) version in the writers’ room where basically part of the ship – since we’re replacing part – that front part is moving towards the Ark One and it’s basically in the middle. So it was supposed to be kind of ‘squashed’ at one point, which logistically just didn’t work out that well,” Wilson explained.

“Also,” she laughed, “I think there was an earlier version where he just went back to Ark 3 – because he wanted to be with his ‘wife’!”

A long-lost brother, a shady conversation about her own hidden past and – in the final moments of the episode – even a complete erasure of her secret criminal record? There must be more to Eva than meets the eye, because Season 2 of The Ark rolls, and just like Brice, we are determined to bring the whole truth to light… even if it does feel a bit spooky.

Tune in to SYFY Wednesdays at 10/9c to catch every new episode of The Ark’s second season. To catch up on the entire series, head here to Peacock, where all 12 episodes of the first season are now streaming.