After dying in a car blowjob incident gone awry, Laura Moon spends most of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods visiting her husband Shadow and tracking dirt from her grave onto his carpet. She’s a background character, albeit a highly intriguing one — but in a recent interview, Neil Gaiman said her role on the upcoming television show will be expanded.
“The first season…doesn’t get us a third of the way through the book,” he said. “Lots of things that are implied or hinted at in the book now get entire episodes. Episode 4 is all about Shadow’s dead wife Laura four years before they even met. You get to follow the course of their relationship and find out what happened to her and find out what she’s doing in the story.”
In the book, Shadow and Laura (played by Emily Browning onscreen) meet because their best friends are dating each other. They have a loving relationship, as she calls him by the pet name “puppy.” While Shadow is in prison, she has an affair with his best friend Robbie, but she remains devoted to Shadow. The deadly car blowjob accident — which killed both Robbie and Laura — was supposed to be the illicit couple’s goodbye.
As Laura is mostly just seen while she’s dead and decaying, and her night time visits to Shadow are cloaked in mystery, the show’s expansion of her plot gives it a chance to develop both characters in a deeper way. It will also give the story a chance to explore the intriguing question of just what does a dead person do with their free time.
American Gods premieres on Starz in April.
