Even though we’re still eight months away from the Season 7 premiere of
24, FOX doesn’t want us to forget about Jack Bauer and his co-workers at CTU. To start building hype for next season FOX unveiled a puzzling cast photo which gives away a major spoiler for the season to come. This is the second time they’ve given away this particular spoiler, the first being in a press release before they started filming the seventh season. So, in a roundabout way I guess the
24 Season 7 cast photo really isn’t a spoiler.
But nonetheless I don’t really understand why they chose to blatantly give away this plot point again in the photo. If you hate spoilers then ignore the photo below, but if you love
24 and either already know the spoiler or just don’t care check out the photo below:
![24 Season 7 Cast Photo](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxvVrTljZ1RjWK_-0ovK0q55ZSg7VOqEXResihCNizf_qjf3nPIdL3u15M3utkFGaMHUr22BOieiLMkkG-kYlfC7Boji5jLxKpRKNo4sz2KSEYhUs5iwxjnwWY22vTCypfACz_zH74HHH9/s400/24+-+Season+7+Cast+Photo.jpg)
By now you should have noticed the return from the dead of CTU agent and Jack Bauer’s best friend, Tony Almeida (actor Carlos Bernard). They’ve been talking about this for a while now, and supposedly the original plan was for Tony to return last season as the show’s main villain. But instead the creators of
24 have decided to announce to the world Tony’s return for next season as one of the main adversaries for Kiefer Sutherland’s Jack Bauer.
![24 - CTU Los Angeles T-Shirt](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUL6XJGkxnkAWIYSR1yXSxRgK9zAmmTj6itj1LmZ7JizwS7vN3G13xP7ak7m3Ww225yj1SfkyDiRvFcl7THCEXgaMAIJI7KTo2NbZ2Ab-SsONr06UNj33mu7lFZFCs-KpN2BoDS92T44J2/s200/CTU+Los+Angeles+T-Shirt.jpg)
Tony has always been my second favorite character on
24 (after Jack), and I was pretty annoyed with the show when they decided to kill him off. So in some small way I’m glad he is returning from the dead, even if he is going to be portrayed as a bad guy. What puzzles me is why bring him back at all? The show has always had a strict rule of "when a character dies on the show they are dead for good" and this flies directly in the face of that. I just think bringing Tony back sets a bad precedent and lessens the impact future deaths on the show will have on the television audience. Plus, if you’re going to bring Tony back why put him in direct conflict with Jack? Doesn’t that just mean he’ll probably end up dying all over again?
24 has had a good mixture of meaningful character deaths, but they went a little haywire with this last season by killing off a bunch of characters that the audience never had a connection with. Because
24 has always chosen to kill off main cast members the show seemed to be running on fumes last year and it made it hard for the audience to connect with the new cast. Hopefully Tony’s rise from the grave will mean a return to form for
24 and good things in the season to come.