(CNN) — There’s been plenty of speculation about the poster for “Mad Men’s” sixth season, and creator Matthew Weiner’s confirmed that it means just as much as you think it does.
“I think it will make sense after the premiere, actually,” Weiner told CNN at the season six premiere screening Wednesday. “It is specifically related to the season. It came to me in a dream.”
The image depicts Jon Hamm’s Don Draper holding the hand of a woman who’s just out of frame, as another version of Don, in a gray suit, passes by in the opposite direction. TV Guide read the poster as perhaps hinting that Don will once again be leading a double life.
Esquire magazine, on the other hand, interpreted the poster as foreshadowing that Don Draper will have to confront himself this season. “The new poster makes this tension almost too plain — note that there are two one-way signs, suggesting Don has to make a decision he can’t take back, and one light-suited and one dark-suited Don,” the magazine said.
Keep the guessing coming because the image, as illustrated to fit the era by 75-year-old Brian Sanders, “is very much related to the story,” Weiner said. “We had an amazing person execute it … a picture is worth a thousand words.”
Of course, Weiner was tight-lipped about everything else, as was his cast.
Elisabeth Moss would only share that viewers will see “Peggy growing up a little bit. She’s trying her hand at a few new things. [A]s always, every season she gets tougher and harder and stronger, sometimes in good ways and sometimes in bad ways.”
Jessica Paré, who’s been portraying Mrs. Don Draper, told us that “the later we get into the ’60s, the more turbulent things become, and I think that every character on the show deals with it in their own way … We’re sort of seeing the whole world go sideways a little bit.”
Hamm, meanwhile, is hoping for his complicated character to finally find some peace.
“I think we’ve seen over six seasons now that Don has been significantly out of balance for quite some time,” he told CNN. “As an actor I try not to judge my characters, but I do have hopes and dreams for someone that I feel like I’ve known so well for so long. And one of those is for him to find peace, and balance, and love and harmony in his life. So we’ll see if that’s in the cards.”
That was all the cast was willing to share, but Weiner assured us that being left in the dark will pay off.
“I feel at this point, everything is so telegraphed and promoted in a certain way that I really think this is like, one of the only things left that’s a complete surprise,” he said. “I want people to sit down and have no idea what’s going to happen, and just go off on a surprise journey. The surprises are within reason.”
CNN’s KJ Matthews contributed to this report.
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