The many faces of Natalie Dormer wreak havoc in exclusive Penny Dreadful: City of Angels sneak peek

When EW spoke with Natalie Dormer last year to get the goods on her new role... well, roles in Penny Dreadful: City of Angels, the Game of Thrones vet promised Magda, her shape-shifting demon persona, will take three different guises that she'll use to manipulate humankind in 1938 Los Angeles. “The audience will discover who those identities are as they continue to watch the show," she said at the time.

In a brand-new sneak peek, which EW can exclusively debut, we see these different forms and learn more about how she'll use them over the course of season 1.

First things first, this is not Penny Dreadful season 4. City of Angels is more a "spiritual descendant," as creator John Logan once put it, to the original series, which placed actress Eva Green in a gothic London setting.

"The continuity from the first iteration of Penny Dreadful to this one is the supernatural element in which monsters are present but the main monsters are within the characters," explains Rory Kinnear, who played Frankenstein's monster in the original and now returns as a German Nazi living in America as a physician.

Magda is what makes City of Angels a Penny Dreadful story.

As the sister of Santa Muerte (Lorenza Izzo), who is the Holy Angel of Death and ferry woman of souls to the afterlife, she is an agent of chaos who believes humankind is inherently evil — and she'll use her changeling powers to prove that point. The video, shown above, sees Magda taking on various forms as she speaks of a "time when nation will battle nation, when race will devour race, when brother will kill brother."

At the center of it all is Tiago Vega, played by Here & Now's Daniel Zovatto. The first chicano police detective on the L.A.P.D. force, Tiago works to solve a case seemingly linked to Día de Muertos, the Mexican Day of the Dead celebrations, while the planned construction of L.A.'s Arroyo Seco Parkway threatens to displace his family and neighborhood. Zovatto calls it "a roller coaster of emotions" as Tiago grapples with racism, Nazism, police brutality, and demagoguery.

"It's intense," he says. "I mean, it is dreadful."

Penny Dreadful: City of Angels — also starring Nathan Lane as a Jewish detective and a mentor figure for Tiago — premieres this April 26 on Showtime.

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