When you think about what they've done here, it starts to make sense why they packaged this whole thing in the re-airing of the first season. The "gimmick" here is to give novel readers something they thought they could predict using their novel knowledge, and then still manage to surprise them. If they had just aired this as a second season, this idea would never have worked, because a second season has to have its own sense of flow. So now we see why they "cancelled" the second season, and instead "rebooted" the franchise -- somebody had this very bright idea.
I think this is the sort of thing that only this franchise can do (most people don't dare take these sorts of creative risks), so I'm very pleasantly surprised.