Takeshi Kovacs is back in a new sleeve of Anthony Mackie (Marvel’s Falcon) with a lot of old and new characters. The original-sleeved Kovacs (played by Will Yun Lee) is also back not in a flashback but in real flesh and so has Quellcrist Falconer (Renee Elise Goldsberry).
The story has jumped 30 years since the end of the Bancroft case in Season 1 but it hardly moves from there during the entire Season 2. Kovacs has been able to find his long-lost love Falconer (rather she presented herself to the world) but there is nothing more that happens. The story keeps going in circles in a very predictable manner. While Season 1 was futuristic and explored the idea of immortality, the latest season doesn’t try to look beyond that and looks rather ordinary. There are not enough twists in the story to keep viewers glued to it and the acting is not great either.
The action sequences have also gone a notch down and there is a total lack of interesting characters who had made Season 1 captivating. Anthony Mackie tries to bring his own charm to the character but looks unconvincing as Kovacs which was played by Joel Kinnaman in Season 1. Falconer’s character was a pivotal one in the first season despite it all being played in flashback, but Season 2 doesn’t do justice to the character and makes it look hollow and weak. The only exception is Simone Missick who plays the role of Trepp which is introduced in Season 2. Her character shows some depth and she has done a good job of playing a dark character with an emotional side to it.
The AI Poe (Chris Conner) gets a partner, AI Dig 301 (Dina Shihabi of Jack Ryan fame), but the comic side of the character is completely missing from the show. Lela Loren as Danica Harlan adds some nuanace as the governor of Harlan’s world, but Colonel Ivan Carrera, the leader of an elite force fighting the rebels played by Torben Liebrecht, was plain boring. The first season had many things going for it—how humanity escaped mortality and how that made humans soulless and debased them into humans minus humanity. But the current season adds nothing new to the story except how it all started. If the showmakers are planning to make sSeason 3 with Netflix’s blessings, they need to put in more effort and budget to the show otherwise it is going to die a death similar to that of Game of Thrones. But unlike the epic that stretched for almost an entire decade, Altered Carbon might face an untimely end.