‘Prison Break’ Season 5: Special Episode Shows How T-Bag Knows Michael Is Alive

Prison Break Season 5 is less than a month away from airing on Fox and now the series has an official title: Resurrection. Fox released a special 30-minute behind-the-scenes episode online this weekend called ‘Resurrection.’ Then, the Prison Break twitter account confirmed Resurrection is indeed the new season’s name. It certainly fits the plot -- Michael was presumed dead until now. We even saw his cold, dead, body in the Prison Break Season 5 trailers. So how is he alive? This new special episode actually gives us more than a few hints as to how Michael didn’t die nearly a decade ago.

“Not all deaths are the same. Some are real, some are a story,” Michael whispers during a voice over in the featurette. Footage shows when T-Bag gets out of prison, he’s handed a folder by the security guard. It’s an envelope with a photo proving Michael is alive and revealing his location. It’s unclear who gives T-Bag the tip. Was it part of Michel’s whole plan?

“He’s right back into it again, of the very thing he did not want to be involved with, which is Michael drawing him in,” Robert Knepper says of his character in the featurette. This suggests Michael may have orchestrated his own death to save Sarah and ultimately give Sarah a better life, one where she wouldn’t have to be looking over her shoulder and a life where little Mike could live, not just survive.

Wentworth Miller reveals Michael has “A new, deadly, set of skills,” which begs the question, what exactly has he had to do to survive all this time? Previous trailers have showed us Michael changed his name and he’s involved with ISIL. He’s a wanted man and Miller says he “reappears” in a Yemeni prison, implying he may not have been there the whole time.

Michael also has new tattoos, which we saw in previous footage but get a better look at in the featurette (skip to 14 minutes). Miller says the tattoos are “pivotal to the story.” The writing on his arms is in Arabic, and we see Michael knows Arabic himself, as he transcribes lettering from his arm to pen and paper. Michael also has tattoos on his hands, which look kind of like the eye of horus.

Meanwhile, Lincoln is working with gangsters like back in the old days. T-Bag reaches out to him and they decide they need Dunbar’s help because he has contacts with connections in Yemen. Sarah doesn’t believe Lincoln when he tells her Michael is alive and denies it could be true, so it’s unclear if she will be able to rekindle that same romantic connection with Michael like fans hope to see.

“All of our characters go through extreme hardships. I think there’s something inspiring about watching someone endure endure endure and come out the other side,” Miller says of the new season, which Dominic Purcell adds he thinks is better than the original.

Resurrection isn’t constrained to a prison. Escaping from cell bars is only the beginning of the nine-episode season. It’s going to be even harder to get out of the Middle East and previous seasons had 22 episodes worth of story to escape. There are so many questions that need answers in such short amount of time. What has Michael been doing with ISIL? Why hasn’t he contacted Sarah all these years? Is he the same man?

Watch the Resurrection special on Fox's website under the full episodes section, or on the Fox Now app. Let us know what you think of all this new info in the comments. Prison Break: Resurrection airs April 4 on Fox.