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The Starz adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods will, of necessity, deviate in some ways from Gaiman’s original, but co-showrunner Michael Green has confirmed that there will be a new deity in the mix.

Vulcan, the Roman god of volcanoes and the forge, will be popping up, played by Corbin Bernsen.

“He’s a brand-new addition who came from an experience Neil had,” Green told EW. “He was going through a small town in Alabama where he saw a statue of Vulcan. It was a steel town and, as he told the story, there was a factory that had a series of accidents where people were killed on the job and they kept happening because an actuarial had done the numbers and realized that it was cheaper to pay out the damages to the families of people who lost people, rather than to shut down the factory long enough to repair, and that occurred to him as modern a definition of sacrifice as there might be.”

The character would have appeared in the episode Gaiman was initially planning to write. According to Bryan Fuller, “We started talking about America’s obsession with guns and gun control and, really, if you’re holding a gun in your hand, it’s a mini volcano, and perhaps, through this character, there’s a conversation to be had.”