If you cast your minds back to the mid-noughties, chances are you'll associate Michael Emerson with his role as the snivelling Benjamin Linus on ABC's Lost. Effectively becoming the big bad of the sci-fi drama as the leader of the Others, Linus is held by many as one of the greatest TV villains of all time.

Of course, Emerson's packed CV doesn't just include the plane crash ensemble, with previous roles in everything from Person of Interest to the first Saw movie, voicing Joker in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns to playing the doomed Siggi Wilzig in Amazon's live-action Fallout. 

Most recently, you'll have seen Emerson as Dr. Leland Townsend on CBS' Evil. In a typically Emerson role, he's back to his villainous best as the occult-obsessed forensic psychologist. As Evil comes to an end with its abridged Season 4, we spoke to Emerson about the show's potential future, whether he'd return to Fallout, and what he thinks about a Lost revival.

Michael Emerson on Fallout, Evil's ending, and the potential of a Lost revival

Catching up with Emerson on Zoom, the bespectacled actor couldn't be further from the villains he's made a name for himself with. Talking about how his career as an illustrator set him up as an actor and how previous work with Fallout showrunner Jonathan Nolan on Person of Interest lured him to the video game adaptation, we asked whether we could see Wilzig return.

As a reminder, Siggi Wilzig was a brilliant scientist who injected himself with the solution to Cold Fushion. It was something of a short-lived role, and after having his foot blasted off by The Ghoul (Walton Goggins), Wilzig was then (willingly) decapitated by Ella Purnell's Lucy. 

Would you be open to returning to Wilzig if there was some form of flashback? I mean, it's the world of Fallout, there's cloning, there's robots, there's all sorts:

"You know, if I got the call, I would be confident that the writing was going to be first-rate. I don't know if they would pick up as if nothing changed or if it would be a new vision, a different point of view, a different context or framing. That that would be up to writers."

The star admitted that while he hadn't played Bethesda's Fallout games, it was quite the experience to star in a series with such a rich world to play in. You said there was some strange location work for Fallout. What did that involve?

"We had to find or create all that strange surface world, there's that sort of thieves outpost town called Philly or whatever. It was this fantastic creation on the backlot, and the interior vault sets and stuff were on soundstages. I have never seen sets that large. It was kind of awe-inspiring."

It wasn't all chilling on the backlot, though, and before being slathered in layers of hot latex to create the decapitated Wilzig, Emerson did some location work: "For the trekking in the desert, we had to go out to the borderland between Nevada and Utah, out in the salt flats out there. That was a place I had never been before, and a little bit eerie. So, yeah, it was a colourful experience."

Even though Emerson has seemingly closed the vault door on his time with Fallout, the upcoming finale of Evil Season 4 is supposedly the end of the supernatural series. While this could also be the end of Leland, Emerson is open to Evil getting a new lease of life.

I know that you've been recently talking about the end of Evil and how you could potentially see it continuing. If there was to be a Season 5 or a revival, where would you see it going?

"I don't want to tease out the finale too much, but there are winners and losers and a sense of completion. Yet everyone's still on their feet, everyone still has agency. So there is that kind of a door cracked open on the future if someone had the smarts and the money to continue something like the show Evil."

Emerson admits that it has less to do with enthusiasm or artistic vision, saying it all comes down to finances: "It happens to great shows, and it's alright, I can walk away from this and feel very satisfied with what, what we accomplished in four seasons.

"It was a lot of good stuff, and it was very entertaining with some great characters and great writing. At the end of the day, good stories and good storytelling." Obviously, any interview with Michael Emerson can't ignore the island-dwelling polar bear in the room.

It's been over 14 years since Lost ended, but it's clearly a show that Emerson looks back on fondly. Despite some not quite understanding the finale (no, they weren't dead all along), Emerson still loves the divisive ending of our heroes meeting in the afterlife and Ben Linus being left behind to atone for his misdeeds.

What did you think of Lost's ending? 

"Each great series dictates its own ending in a way by its narrative structure... In Lost, it started at a point and it exploded outward in all directions, many characters, many storylines, many, many lives, misfortunes and things.

"I think the way then to wrap it up is to bring it all back to that centre point - Jack's eyes opening and closing. I think that was the right diagram and I liked that it didn't end on a gag or a trick or, it was purgatory. Well, of course, it always was purgatory. It always was all those things, but the writers were more ambitious.

"They wanted a spiritual ending, and I think they got it. They got a moment of redemption, a moment of passage out of the trials of life into paradise. Just as in Shakespeare's comedies, people end up in couples, and they go off to a happy future. So it was on Lost.

"They walked two by two into the hereafter from that cosmic chapel space, leaving Benjamin Linus on the park bench. What could be better?" As for the million-dollar question, Emerson is rightly as sceptical as we are that a big event series like Lost could work with a revival.

There's been lots of talk about a Lost reboot or revival over the years. Where do you stand on that in terms of whether you think it's a good idea, whether you'd rush back, or whether you think you've closed the book on the chapter of Ben Linus? 

"There aren't good or bad ideas in show business, there's just, 'Can you do it? And can you do it well?' It couldn't be, nor should it be, what Lost was 20 years ago. It would have to be because it's a piece of intellectual property. Someone owns it, someone is free to sell the rights to someone else who thinks they can do something with it.

Emerson went on to confess, "But what to do with it because you can't make that magic again, you have to find a new magic." That hasn't stopped him from having his own ideas, concluding, "It could be a completely different point of view or angle or time frame context. You could never assemble that cast again, so it would have to be a whole new thought, based loosely on an old successful television program."

Even if Siggi Wilzig will likely remain a decaying head in the Wasteland of Fallout, Lost's "The New Man in Charge" epilogue has left the hatch open for Ben Linus' eventual return in a Dharma Initiative parka. Thankfully for us, Michael Emerson himself is nothing like the conniving character he played on one of TV's best-loved shows. 

Evil is currently available to stream on Paramount Plus - the Season 4 finale will air on August 22