【Secret Confessions: Wifey’s BFF Episode 48】

After the Super Bowl,Secret Confessions: Wifey’s BFF Episode 48 viewers got a first look at 24: Legacy, the new iteration of the Fox action franchise that made Kiefer Sutherland's Jack Bauer a household name.

We last saw Jack surrendering to the Russians at the end of 24: Live Another Day, so it's no surprise that Legacyfeatures a whole new cast of characters, although the show's iconic real-time format remains the same.

This time, our hero is Eric Carter, played by Corey Hawkins -- best known for his breakout role as Dr. Dre in Straight Outta Compton and his ongoing role as Heath in The Walking Dead.

Eric is the leader of an elite squad of U.S. Army Rangers, who, six months prior to the events of the series, killed terrorist leader Sheik Ibrahim Bin-Khalid. In the aftermath, Bin-Khalid’s followers declared a fatwah against Carter, his squad and their families, forcing them into federal witness protection.

But as the premiere proved, new lives and identities haven't protected Eric's squad from being exposed, and now he and his teammate Ben Grimes (Charlie Hofheimer) are the only survivors, racing to stay ahead of Bin-Khalid's acolytes and relying on the protection of Rebecca Ingram (Miranda Otto), the former National Director of CTU who ran their operation against Bin-Khalid.

Turns out that trouble has followed Eric and Ben home because Ben stole something from Bin-Khalid the night the Rangers killed him: a box containing a USB with a list of sleeper cells in the U.S., along with codes to activate the recruits for an attack.

At the end of the premiere, Eric discovered that Ben ran off with the USB and intends to sell the list to the highest bidder, which clearly won't end well for anyone.

They probably won't be able to rely on Rebecca for too long either, since she recently retired from her post to support her husband's (Jimmy Smits) presidential campaign and technically no longer has access to CTU's intel. To make matters worse, in the premiere, she made the super sensible decision to knock out her successor, Director Keith Mullins (Teddy Sears), and tie him up in a closet -- perfect 24logic -- since she suspects that he might be the mole responsible for leaking the Rangers' whereabouts to Bin-Khalid's men.

During a panel at the Television Critics Association winter press tour in January, the show's producers noted that they wanted to make Legacyaccessible to newcomers as well as longtime fans, which was borne out by the standalone nature of the premiere.

"We’re very carefully making sure that people do not have to have seen the original series to follow," said executive producer Evan Katz. "We’re really mostly concerned with making this story a complete thing and making it these actors' and these characters' story."

That said, observant fans will still catch a few Easter eggs, like the way new CTU analyst Mariana Stiles (Coral Peña) name-dropped her cousin, Edgar (Louis Lombardi) -- who was killed in Season 5 of 24 -- when proving her credentials to her snarky colleagueAndy (Dan Bucatinsky).

In case the premiere didn't make it obvious, the producers also reiterated that Eric Carter is a very different kind of hero from Jack Bauer, so we should expect a learning curve in the coming episodes.

"Eric Carter is a young soldier who has returned from duty. He’s not an intelligence officer. He’s not a CTU agent. So Jack [at start of 24], was a person who ... the die had been cast in terms of what he does, why he does what he does," said executive producer Howard Gordon. "This is really an origin story. [Eric] is really feeling his way through this journey, and we’re seeing the birth of an agent."

Hawkins agreed: "There’s things that Eric just isn’t comfortable doing. He is sort of an average human being with extraordinary ability in terms of being a soldier. But the rules of engagement are very different on the home front. And there’s an adjustment period that we’re going to have to watch him stumble through, messily."

"He’s learning and coming to grips with the fact that the enemy may be one of us. The enemy may not be who you think it is," added executive producer Manny Coto. "There are allegiances that aren’t played out as they are on the battlefield where you have your comrades and everybody’s in it. So the more he’s plunged into this world, the more he realizes that the choices he made and was used to making on the battlefield don’t apply in this environment."

The producers pointed out that the very nature of terrorism has changed since 24first began in 2001. "The big fear was large scale attacks and giant infrastructure, and it’s become unfortunately something more that can arise in your own neighborhood, the lone wolf attack," noted Coto. "That’s something that the show is dramatizing this year and extrapolating on in the worst case scenario [way] that 24usually does."

Hawkins admitted that he felt his fair share of trepidation about headlining such an iconic franchise, but between the strength of the script and the opportunity to be a role model, he leapt at the chance.

"If the challenge wasn’t there, then there was no reason for me to say yes to the role. The script happened to be amazing when I read it. It lifted off the page, and then your mind just starts going with where you can take it and what it means in television to be a hero and look like I look," he told reporters. "So that just really stuck with me. And then the only pressure is, as an actor, to step into Eric Carter’s shoes and make him as complex and as flawed and as human as I could, and that’s the fun. That’s what we get to play with every day, those conversations in between the words, what’s not on the page. Not really following in the footsteps of anything that came before, because 24is all about the moment that you’re in, and as an actor, that’s a gift."

With the country increasingly divided along political lines, Gordon noted that Legacyasks a question that many people are currently grappling with:

"The headline of the show and the question that it asks, and [that] every character in the show asks is, 'what does it mean to be an American?' What does it mean to be an American as a black soldier coming back from war? What does it mean to be a high-powered woman who ran CTU?" he said. "Everybody’s asking that question in their own way."

Episode 2 of24: Legacy will premiere Monday, February 6 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Fox.