Warning: This article will contain SPOILERS for the second season of “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.” If you haven’t seen the first half of season two and/or don’t want to know what’s coming in the second half of the season, please don’t read more…

What can we expect when “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” returns in February? According to actor Thomas Dekker, we’ll see a “smarter” John Connor.

“What I love so much about our back nine, for me personally, is John is a lot smarter even than I think everybody’s thinking he is about everything that’s going on,” he told SciFi Wire. “So it’s very cool, for me, to get through that. … Because he still kind of has that kind of innocent vibe with his thinking, and you find out it’s not true. So that’s very cool.”

Dekker also says we’ll see more flash-forwards to the future of humanity and the war against SkyNet.

“A lot more. Yeah. A lot more. I think that that’s inevitable, you know what I mean? You can’t sort of toss it in, … like, “This happens soon.” You’ve got to bring it in now, he said.

Dekker also says that fans can be expect the show to be more serialized in the second half of the season and that there will less of “revolving door” of Terminators sent back in time to snuff him out.

“I think that the writers are tired of that. I think that initially, when we started the second season, kind of one of the requests of sort of the powers that be was that we did more singular episodes, less serialized.” he said. “That’s why they invented the wall with all the names on it, so that we would be able to do a mission an episode. But that involved a lot of Terminators coming back, and to me that’s always irritated our writers. And now they have permission to be more serialized again, and more science fiction, so that’s happening less. Because that started to bug me. I was like, “Yeah, this time machine’s busier than freaking JFK airport.” ”

When “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” ended last month, audiences were left hanging with several cliffhangers including the fate of two prominent women in John Connor’s life–his mother, Sarah and his girlfriend, Riley.

The last time we saw Riley, she was cradled in John’s arms, having apparently slit her wrists in a suicide attempt. Co-star Garret Dillahunt let slip that Riley wasn’t dead, yet and now actor Thomas Dekker, who plays John, confirms that Riley will live, despite her self-inflicted injuries.

“She did not die from slitting her wrists,” Dekker said. “I will say that much. But I can’t say what happens… Garret’s a trickster, so I wouldn’t believe much that he said.”

However, Dekker did hint that the promised death of a main character hasn’t happened just yet.

“They said at Comic-Con that one of the major characters would die this season, and I think everyone thought it was Garret’s character [killer cyborg Cromartie] … His character did die, but then … he’s back [as a new cyborg, so] maybe he’s not the one who dies,” Dekker said. “I can’t really say who. It’s so cryptic. Somebody still has to die. … Yes, there’s still a major death. I think.”

Finally, Dekker did confirm what many saw in the preview for the second half of the season–John will meet his father, Kyle Reese, during the second half of the season. Kyle is set to be played by actor Jonathan Jackson.

When asked in what time period we’d see John meeting Kyle, Dekker was elusive.  He said that the meeting could happen in the present or future, teasing “Wait for the first episode. You’ll get what I’m saying.”

“Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” returns on Friday, February 13.