Kiefer Sutherland Teases Another ’24’ Return as Jack Bauer

Kiefer Sutherland is holding out hope for another run at the 24 franchise. The drama ran from 2001 to 2010 and returned for a brief revival in 2014, but Sutherland does not believe the story is really over. In a new interview with GQ Magazine, he said that Jack Bauer’s story is “unresolved.”

“I miss it. It was an incredible experience,” Sutherland said of the series that made him a household name. “I have learned that you’re just better off not to be definitive about your answer of whether you will do something or not do something. I love playing that character. I do believe the story is unresolved. If something were to be written that made sense to me and that I thought was going to contribute to the franchise then I would be behind it, even if my participation in that were to be limited. My involvement will always be predicated on what I perceive is the quality of the writing. If [original showrunner] Howard Gordon is motivated to do it, we’ll see what happens.”

Sutherland played the lead character in 24 – a serial drama about a fictional law enforcement agency called the Counter Terrorist Unit working to protect the United States from terrorist threats. The show had been in the works for well over a year before it premiered, but it just happened to come out less than two months after 9/11. That momentous terrorist attack would influence pop culture for decades to come, and 24 was considered to be a huge part of that trend. Sutherland noted that that’s still a major part of the show’s legacy.

“All of us felt very strongly that after that terrible day of 9/11 when our show started emulating one of the great tragedies in American history… I remember going through weeks of not wanting to do it anymore, and I think everybody on the show felt the same,” he said. “Nobody wanted anything coming close to representing this awful thing we just watched happened. Having said that, the country felt very differently. Even if it was just a television show and a guy fighting back, that’s what they wanted. So that’s what we did.”

The revival series, 24: Legacy did not include Sutherland as Bauer, though Sutherland was an executive producer on the miniseries. He has said that he believes a new revival today would have to tie in the Legacy cast with Bauer’s story, or else introduce a new cast in relation to Bauer.

“I think the only thing that would ever make sense – and I’ve told [Howard Gordon] this – is that you launch the new cast because they’re trying to get [Jack Bauer] back from China or wherever the hell it is that I ended up,” he told NME.

There’s no official word on another revival right now, but all 9 seasons of 24 are streaming on Hulu. You can also stream 8 of those seasons on IMDb TV for free with ads.