THE SKINNY: At the TCAs for Fox, writer/director/creator of DOLLHOUSE, Joss Whedon, gave us a sneak peak at what the surprising second season of the show will be bring.

And for Whedon, it is an amazing thing he is even involved in a second season. “This is the biggest surprise of my entire career, season two,” Whedon says. “I didn’t expect to be sitting here for a while.”

But after getting over the initial shock, Whedon says he went quickly to work on season two, specifically building to give Echo, played by Eliza Dushku, a sense of purpose and to ground her more.

Whedon says that in season two, Echo realizes she’s a person who exists and during a mission discovers there is something that she actually wants. He also said to expect Echo to be far less passive than in season one and that the entire second season takes place three months after the first season finale.

As far as the unaired finale to the show – taped with the expectation that the show would not be renewed – “Epitaph One,” Whedon say it now presents a problem of serving two masters. Those people who have seen it and know the future and those that haven’t seen it. “Epitaph” was set 10 years into the future and actually is what happens in the show, he says. Now they are dealing with everything that happened in-between that bleak future.

Whedon also commented on the status of Amy Acker on the show saying that because she has signed on to another TV show, she will only be in a few episodes in the second season.