The season 3 finale of 'Eureka' brought about a lot of uncertainty. While Sheriff Carter helped save the town from a magnetic disturbance, he faced two bigger bombshells: His daughter Zoe was heading off to Harvard early, and Tess got offered a great job in Australia.

While they cannot yet get too specific, stars Colin Ferguson (who plays Carter) and Salli Richardson-Whitfield (who plays Allison Blake) gave AOL TV some insight into what will be coming up next season.

The word of the day at the Eureka panel on Saturday was 'awesome'. For some apparent reason everyone on the panel ended their sentences with the word 'awesome'. That, and a mention about doing their scenes in towels. That was actually an on-going joke coming from a revelation that the stars and writers presented to the audience as something that will be coming up during season three.

Of course there's more than just certain people walking around in towels coming up n the new season, and the panel let the audience in on what they would see when the show premieres this Tuesday. You can find out as well after the jump.

(S02E13) Will is off this week, headed to Talladega to cheer on his beloved Earnhardt Jr and the #8 Budweiser Chevrolet, or something like that. He asked that I take over Eureka, so here I am. Before we get to the actual episode though, I wanted to bring up a comment that TV Squad reader Derek made on last week's post.

He mentioned his growing annoyance with the formula of Eureka. I think it's a fair criticism. It hasn't worn on me yet, but we all react differently to these things, which is part of what makes it all so fun. I bring it up though, because I think it highlights what is a difficult balancing act for a show like this. If a show gets too wrapped up in an ongoing story, it runs the risk of alienating viewers who think it's all a big stall game. Please see every Lost post on the internet for an example. On the other hand, not enough serialization, and it gets formulaic, annoying an entirely different group. It's something that I think team Eureka has balanced well this season, but your mileage may vary. Anyway, after the jump, a look at the big season finale.

Good news everyone. SciFi has announced that Eureka will be coming back for a second season. They have ordered 13 more episodes which are set to begin production in the spring. The series will return with all new episodes next summer. Based on the numbers, this was a slam dunk decision for the network. According to the press release, Eureka is SciFi's highest rated, most watched show of 2006. Not only that, it outperformed the previous year's time slot average by +175%. The detail that really surprised me though... Tuesday's Eureka finale beat the CW's Veronica Mars premiere in males 18-49 and males 25-54. Confirmed to be returning for the second season are Colin Ferguson, Salli Richardson-Whitfield, Joe Morton, Jordan Hinson, Ed Quinn, Debrah Farentino and Matt Frewer. I'm a little disturbed that they didn't mention Erica Cerra there, but hopefully that's just an over-site.