Zara Taylor is back, and this time the trouble follows her from Libya to Madrid.

Ritu Arya returns as the MI6 agent in Apollo Has Fallen, the next instalment in the Has Fallen television franchise, dropping on Lionsgate Play on September 18. The eight-episode thriller picks up after the events of Paris Has Fallen and reunites Arya with Tewfik Jallab, who's back as former protection officer Vincent Taleb.

Howard Overman, who created and wrote the series, is back at the helm on the writing side, while David Caffrey and Alice Troughton split directing duties. The plot this time revolves around a hijacking that spirals into something bigger. Mercenaries, old betrayals and a virus that could level Europe. Zara and Vincent get pulled into it together, and the show moves them across two very different cities as the stakes climb.

What's changed is Zara herself. Arya says the character has hardened since we last saw her, even if the trust issues haven't gone anywhere. "Zara has still got the same trust issues as before, if not even more," Arya said. "But she's a little bit more hardened and a bit better and more experienced at what she does."

According to Arya, the season opens with Zara running her own team on a Libya assignment that starts out low-stakes. That doesn't last. "She's just rolling with the punches and enjoying it, until a terrorist threatens the world with a deadly virus and things start to really kick off," she said. "From then on, she's really pushed professionally. But the threat also feels very personal this time." The job, Arya added, forces Zara to question who she can actually rely on, because "the rules that she always operated under don't apply anymore."

Director David Caffrey sees Zara's arc as a balancing act between the physical and the emotional. He points to her MI6 training as the reason the action sequences land, but says the real work is in what happens between them. "She may be an unlikely action hero, but when she's thrown into the action, she is actually able to step up to the plate," Caffrey said, adding that Zara has to cope with "all the emotional things that come her way" while jumping from Paris to Benghazi at short notice. He credits Arya for bringing what he calls "a little bit of a sparkle" to the part.

For Indian viewers who caught Paris Has Fallen on Lionsgate Play, the sequel arrives without much of a gap, and the London-to-Libya-to-Madrid spread suggests the franchise is widening its map rather than repeating itself. Whether the virus plot holds up over eight episodes is the thing to watch for once it streams from Thursday.