For me, one of the biggest surprises last year, film-wise, was The Maze Runner, the adaptation of the first of James Dashner’s post-apocalyptic teen sci-fi novels directed by Wes Ball. While I was never super sold on The Hunger Games and thought Divergent was the worst piece of crap I’ve ever seen, I actually really liked The Maze Runner (as evidenced by this review), mostly because, while it did spend too long describing the names of concepts in this weird future world, it didn’t dumb down the plot for the sake of teen romance. That was a pleasant turn of events for such a film.

And this is why I’m now very excited to see the sequel, The Scorch Trials, also directed by Wes Ball. The sequel opens up the world of the young characters (among them Dylan O’Brien, Kaya Scodelario, and Thomas Brodie-Sangster) by about a million percent, showing them the world outside the carefully constructed and monitored maze and its deadly spider robot things. Oh, those were but a Sunday afternoon stroll compared to what exists in the Scorch, a.k.a the dead, desert Earth that remains following whatever-the-hell-it-was that created such a society.

The first trailer for The Scorch Trials doesn’t show us too much of that outside world, but it does introduce the first adult character we’ve seen, really, since Patricia Clarkson in the first movie: Littlefinger/Mayor Carcetti himself, Aidan Gillen, who, I’m just going to guess, is playing an untrustworthy sort of person. Once they leave the compound they’re going to have to face a wasteland full of weirdos and zombie people and crime lords and things. So that’ll be fun. Also set to appear in the movie are Lili Taylor, Barry Pepper, Nathalie Emmanuel, and M-F-ing Giancarlo Esposito.

Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials will be released on September 18th, only about a year after the first one came out. That’s some fast-ass production.

Are you stoked for this movie? What do you hope they keep from the books (which I haven’t read so you can make anything up)? Let me know below!