It's been a rough road for Dr. Ephraim Goodweather and his ragtag group of survivors for the last three seasons of The Strain, although to be fair, it's hard to find much leisure time when one is constantly running for their lives from the "stingers" of bloodthirsty vampires. Unfolding over a surprisingly short period of in-universe time, the viral vampire apocalypse coordinated jointly by ancient monster the Master and his billionaire human partner Eldritch Palmer has nearly brought mankind to its knees, and things don't look to be getting much better in the short term.
Of course, as The Strain fans should now be well aware, Eph and company will have a lot more than vampires to deal with in FX's upcoming 10-episode fourth and final season. Thanks to the ridiculously selfish actions of Eph's scorned young son Zach in the season 3 finale, a large portion of New York City sustained a nuclear-level blast, and there's sure to be plenty of both literal and figurative fallout connected to that monumental occurrence.
While FX has yet to grant a formal premiere date to The Strain season 4, the network has now released the first promo for the season, which can be watched above. Interestingly, the promo doesn't feature any of the series' regular characters, instead presenting itself as a sort of unsettling PSA imploring citizens to donate their blood to something called "The Partnership."
The big question fans are likely to have now is what exactly this "partnership" is? The blood donations appear to be taking place in the large health centers previously established by Palmer as part of his nefarious cooperation with the Master, who was last seen inhabiting Palmer's body, after the arrogant businessman grew tired of being pushed around and unsuccessfully attempted to strike back against his former ally. Therefore, one wonders if the Partnership isn't secretly being run by the strigoi in an attempt to establish their own easy blood supply.
On the other hand though, it's unclear what state the Master will be in when season 4 begins, as the season 3 finale ended with his vampire servants all losing his controlling influence from inside their heads. This would leave devious former Nazi officer Eichorst in charge of the evil side, and it's not impossible to imagine that he might opt to pursue a less obvious route of using the Partnership for vampire benefit. One thing that seems unlikely is that any type of elected government will be running it, as what was left of that decided to exit stage left late last season.
The Strain season 4 airs sometime during summer 2017.
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Source: FX