Elizabeth Bowen says Deputy Liv fighting to 'prove herself again' in back half of 'Resident Alien' Season 2

As the town of Patience, Colorado grapples with the fallout of another homicide in the second half of Resident Alien Season 2 on SYFY, one character struggles to be heard. We are, of course, talking about Elizabeth Bowen's Deputy Liv Baker, who — more often than not — feels like she's shouting into the void. Her theories, suggestions, and suspicions are always sound, making her one of the sharpest characters on the series. The only problem? No one is listening.

"We can expect her to go through that feeling of having to prove herself again," Bowen tells SYFY WIRE over the phone. "For Liv, I don't think that's ever over. I think she's always going to be trying to prove herself to others. But it's going to be right in her face and she's going to feel like she's talking, but no one's listening ... At the risk of repeating myself from when we were doing Comic-Con, there's a lot of discovery going on, there's a lot of introspection, and there's a lot of questions [that] she has."

Those "questions" pertain to the puzzling murder of Sam Hodges and his connection to the sinister Galvan/Powell Group, whose motivations for corrupting Sam and the real Dr. Harry Vanderspeigle (Alan Tudyk) still remain unclear within the context of the show. Nevertheless, we are inching ever closer to the heart of the conspiracy with the growing investigation into the death of the GP Group operative that Asta (Sara Tomko) shot dead at the end of the midseason finale.

The ensuing cover-up of evidence concocted by alien-in-disguise Harry (also played by Tudyk) and D'Arcy (Alice Wetterlund) brings Lena Torres (Nicola Correia-Damude) — a shrewd and hard-nosed detective from the neighboring town of Jessup — into the fold. Torres proves herself worthy of going toe-to-toe with the blustering Sheriff Mike Thompson (Corey Reynolds) and while the two characters get off on the wrong foot, they do start to find common ground via their past experiences as police officers in major cities. This growing sense of admiration starts to alienate (pun very much intended) Deputy Liv, who only just secured the respect of her colleague.

"They come to more of somewhat equal footing and all of a sudden, she kind of feels like she's back at square one," Bowen explains. "Not with his blatant disrespect or dismissiveness of her ideas, but more that she is like a child who can't even be heard. All the adults are talking and she's trying to tell people what’s going on or say [like], ‘Hey, I’ve got this great idea.' Or even sometimes, ‘Just look at me. Think of me' ... [For instance] the part [in Episode 10] where there's not much Chinese food left, she’s desperately trying to get a bite of something, and Detective Torres takes the very last bite of egg roll literally out of her chopsticks and eats it herself. That, to me, really sums up how Liv is — for several episodes — almost invisible to both Mike and Lena."

At the same time, Detective Torres' upheaval of Liv and Mike's professional relationship does lend itself to comedy as Liv awkwardly attempts to get a word in edgewise.

"When I'm in character, the awkwardness is such a big part of Liv’s personality and how she unintentionally presents herself to the world," Bowen continues. "So, that's very much ingrained in me with my character. But it is always fun to have those spontaneous moments when there's something going on that she has to react to and maybe I have a reaction I wasn't expecting, or I'm getting something I wasn't expecting from the other actors. At times, it makes the awkwardness even easier to portray."

New episodes of Resident Alien air on SYFY every Wednesday at 10 p.m. Eastern before hitting the SYFY app and Peacock the following day. The hit show has already been renewed for a third season.