A tall man in a white shirt with rolled sleeves stands in a smoky night market street under towering holograms, while far overhead ivory towers rise out of the haze into gold light.
Bay City, 2384: the last Envoy, in a borrowed body, on the ground beneath the Aerium.

Altered Carbon · Netflix · Season 1 · 2018

Season 1

Netflix’s ten-episode take on the first novel: a rebel soldier, two hundred and fifty years on ice, wakes in a policeman’s body and is hired by a man who lives above the clouds to solve his own murder.

Netflix released Altered Carbon all at once on 2 February 2018: ten episodes created and run by Laeta Kalogridis, with Steve Blackman as co-showrunner, shot in Vancouver and reportedly Netflix’s most expensive production to that date. Netflix ordered it in January 2016. Warner Bros. had optioned Richard K. Morgan’s novel as a feature film in 2002; Kalogridis, who had long wanted to adapt it, took the rights with her company Mythology Entertainment around 2012, and Morgan served as a consultant. Joel Kinnaman plays Kovacs in the Ryker sleeve, and Will Yun Lee plays his original body in the Harlan’s World flashbacks.

The season adapts the first book and keeps its spine — a dead rich man hires a resleeved convict to find out who killed him — but rebuilds the hero’s past around it. The Envoys are rebels and Kovacs is the last of them; Quellcrist Falconer is alive, his teacher and his lover; Reileen Kawahara is his sister. Every episode takes its title from a classic film noir, and the pilot’s director, Miguel Sapochnik, called the result “sci-fi film noir”: the ground in teal haze and holograms, the Meths in soft gold light above the clouds.

The parts below are the ten episodes. Book I has the novel, the books vs. the series sets the two side by side, and Season 2 takes a recast Kovacs home to Harlan’s World.

Episode 1

Out of the Past

Two hundred and fifty years earlier, in an off-world hotel, an Envoy’s sixth sense shows Takeshi Kovacs, in another sleeve, the troopers of the Colonial Tactical Assault Corps — CTAC — beyond the wall. Their officer, Jaeger, arrests him for treason, as an agent of the terrorist Quellcrist Falconer, and shoots his partner Sarah through the stack: real death. Kovacs dies resisting.

In 2384 he wakes at Alcatraz in the leased body of a big white man with military-grade neurachem. Lieutenant Kristin Ortega, who doubts he can be an Envoy, flies him up through the clouds to the Aerium. At Suntouch House Miriam Bancroft shows him the only Songspire tree on Earth, and Laurens, a Meth centuries old, offers a pardon and a fortune if Kovacs will solve his murder. The police say suicide; his backup is missing his last two days.

Kovacs refuses, and checks into the Raven, an AI hotel nobody uses, run by an AI in the persona of Edgar Allan Poe. When Dimi Kadmin’s gunmen come for the last Envoy, the ceiling guns cut them down, and a hitman that good means murder after all. Kovacs takes the case.

A dark-haired woman pilots an angular police hovercar above a sea of cloud in clear daylight, a man in a white shirt seated beside her looking up, past ivory towers crowned with gardens.
S1 · 1 Up to the Aerium Episode 1: Lieutenant Kristin Ortega flies the newly released prisoner up out of Bay City’s haze to the Aerium, where the Meths live in towers above the clouds and never have to see the city. She doesn’t believe he is an Envoy — the Envoys all died — and she knows the body he is wearing far better than he does. Waiting at the top is Suntouch House, and a client who wants his own murder solved.
In a red-and-black Victorian hotel lobby under gold chandeliers, a man in a frock coat stands behind the desk as two rotary guns unfold from the ceiling above gunmen at the door.
S1 · 2 Checking In at the Raven Episode 1: the Raven is an AI hotel nobody stays at any more, kept by an AI wearing the persona of Edgar Allan Poe, and Kovacs is its only guest. When Dimi Kadmin’s gang walks in for the last Envoy, the ceiling guns come down and cut them apart. Poe slags Dimi’s stack before Kovacs can learn who sent him — but a hitman of that grade means Bancroft was murdered, and Kovacs takes the case.
Episode 2

Fallen Angel

Oumou Prescott, the family’s lawyer, shows him the Bancroft vault at Psychasec, where Laurens and Miriam step out of pods, while Ortega follows him on a tracker she has secretly planted. Envoy training, remembered in Quell’s voice, narrows Bancroft’s death threats to Vernon Elliot, an ex-Protectorate marine with a data brokerage in Bridgetown, the container village on the old bridge. Elliot blames Bancroft for his daughter Lizzie, whose mind is caught in a trauma loop; his wife Ava, a dipper, has thirty years on ice. Kovacs judges him no assassin. In a museum of the Uprising a schoolgirl repeats a line from his childhood. At Jack It Off, a Licktown brothel, a worker called Anemone says Lizzie was seeing Bancroft, and a brawl outside ends with Ortega arresting Kovacs. Back at the Raven, Miriam is waiting in his room, and a drone records what follows.

A woman lawyer in a charcoal suit and a man in a white shirt stand in a pale vault of glowing frosted pods, facing an elegant couple in ivory and silver.
S1 · 3 The Family Vault Episode 2: Oumou Prescott, the Bancrofts’ lawyer, shows Kovacs where the family keeps its spare bodies — a vault at Psychasec, row on row of clones in pods — and Laurens and Miriam step out of two of them. This is what a Meth is: a mind rich enough that its body is a wardrobe. It is also what makes the police verdict so strange — a man with spare bodies in the cellar has little reason to shoot himself.
On a rusted suspension bridge stacked with shipping containers, a man in a white shirt stands at the open door of a container where a bearded man turns from glowing screens.
S1 · 4 Bridgetown Episode 2: Bancroft’s death threats lead to Bridgetown, the container village built along the old bridge, and to Vernon Elliot, an ex-Protectorate marine who runs a data brokerage out of a box. The two men fight first and talk after. Elliot blames Bancroft for his daughter Lizzie, whose mind loops through its trauma in storage, while his wife Ava, a dipper, serves thirty years on ice. Kovacs crosses him off the list, and one episode later hires him.
Episode 3

In a Lonely Place

Kovacs strikes a bargain: Elliot will watch his back, and Poe, licensing a room as a psychiatric office, will treat Lizzie in virtual. She begins to speak. The two men buy CTAC-grade weapons from a candy-cart dealer in a Licktown getting ready for the Day of the Dead, and go to the party Bancroft throws for everyone he suspects. Ortega, in a dress, is there to police the entertainment, a married pair of gladiators in a low-gravity pit; when Kovacs climbs in, she ends it by shooting the gravity generator. Bancroft admits he hired the spy, Mister Leung, a man Ortega’s ONI cannot scan. Upstairs, the woman in Miriam’s body is the daughter, Naomi, in her mother’s old sleeve; a Meth called Clarissa Severin quotes Kovacs’s past at him. Back at Jack It Off, Anemone drugs him and is killed, and he wakes in the Wei Clinic.

On a neon-lit night street strung with marigold garlands and paper lanterns, a street vendor at a cart heaped with brightly iced sugar skulls lifts a gun before two men.
S1 · 5 The Candy Cart Episode 3: the bargain is struck. Elliot will watch Kovacs’s back, and Poe, who licenses a room as a psychiatric office, will treat Lizzie in virtual. Before Bancroft’s party the two men go shopping in a Licktown getting ready for the Day of the Dead, where a candy-cart dealer sells hardware fit for CTAC: a flechette gun, Tebbit knives, a Sunjet. Kovacs is arming himself for a dinner party.
In a marble gallery around a sunken pit, a woman in a midnight-blue evening gown fires a pistol as a brass machine at the rim bursts in sparks, while two fighters in patterned suits float in mid-air and a man in a white shirt drops in.
S1 · 6 The Gravity Pit Episode 3: Bancroft gathers everyone he suspects at Suntouch House, with gladiators for entertainment — a married couple fighting in a low-gravity pit. Kovacs climbs in, and Ortega, in a dress and on duty, ends it by shooting the gravity generator. The guest list is the season in miniature: Naomi wearing her mother’s old sleeve, Rei in a stranger’s as Clarissa Severin, and Mister Leung, a man Ortega’s implant cannot see at all.
Episode 4

Force of Evil

The clinic’s technicians, and Dimi’s twin — an illegal second copy of the hitman — think they have Elias Ryker. In virtual they beat, burn and kill him, round after round, respinning him each time, while the episode cuts to Quell teaching her Envoys how to survive exactly this. For Día de los Muertos, Ortega spins up her grandmother in the sleeve of an arrested stiff dealer so she can sit at the family table; the family argues about resurrection, and Abuela asks not to be brought back again. Kovacs takes over the simulation, fakes his own death, wakes in the real claiming to be a CTAC officer, and kills everyone in the clinic. He leaves with Dimi’s head. When Ortega confronts him at the Raven, he cuts into the sleeve’s arm until she admits it: Ryker was her partner and her lover.

At a candlelit family table before a home altar of sugar skulls and red flowers, a burly shaven-headed man with tattooed forearms sits in a cardigan beside a dark-haired woman while a grey-haired old woman across the table argues.
S1 · 7 Abuela Comes to Dinner Episode 4, Día de los Muertos: Ortega brings her grandmother back for the family meal in the first body to hand, a stiff dealer just brought into the station. The family argues over resurrection, and Abuela asks not to be spun up again. None of this is in the novel; Kalogridis gave Ortega a religious Mexican-American family of cops the book never did, and in episode 9 the show takes it away from her.
In a cavernous white clinic, a man sits up on a steel table under surgical lamps while technicians and a stubbled man in a leather jacket stand at the consoles with their backs to him.
S1 · 8 Waking in the Wei Clinic Episode 4: in virtual, the Wei Clinic beats, burns and kills him round after round, respinning him each time, while the episode cuts away to Quell teaching her Envoys how to survive exactly this. He uses the lesson. He seizes the simulation, fakes his own death and wakes in the real, claiming to be a CTAC officer. Then he kills everyone in the clinic and walks out with Dimi’s head.
Episode 5

The Wrong Man

Ryker, Kovacs learns, beat a man over the death of his childhood friend Mary Lou, sure her religious coding was faked, and was arrested when the man turned up murdered — Dimi’s frame. Kovacs delivers Dimi’s head to Ortega on a platter. A tip from Poe puts Bancroft and his son Isaac at the Fight Drome on the night of the murder; in the AI Carnage’s underground arena Kovacs finds his own original sleeve in a gladiator tube, and a recording of Laurens beating Isaac. At Isaac’s house a gene printer and a clone of his father explain the alibi: the son went to Osaka as the father. Kovacs and Ortega become lovers, and she shows him her cold cases and her sketch of the ghostwalker. At police headquarters, an old church whose basilica has been floored over, they question Dimi, resleeved, until a man disguised as an officer takes him into the lift. It is Leung. He slags Ortega’s partner, Samir Abboud, and stabs her.

In an underground arena a man stares at a tall glass tube where a black-haired man floats asleep in pale fluid, while a showman in iridescent clothes and a gold bow tie spreads his hands.
S1 · 9 His Old Face Episode 5: Poe’s tip puts Bancroft and his son Isaac at the Fight Drome on the night of the murder, so Kovacs goes underground to the AI Carnage’s arena. Among the stored gladiator sleeves hangs his own original body, the face he wore in the Uprising. Carnage has a recording too: Laurens beating Isaac. At Isaac’s house a gene printer and a clone of his father explain the rest — the son went to Osaka as the father.
Under the stone arches and stained glass of a church turned police station, a dark-haired woman looks back toward a uniformed man holding a lift door open for a prisoner.
S1 · 10 The Officer at the Lift Episode 5: Kovacs and Ortega have become lovers, and she has shown him her cold cases — victims whose religious coding was faked — and her sketch of the ghostwalker. Now, in a police headquarters built inside an old church, they question Dimi, resleeved. An officer takes him into the lift. It is Leung, the ghostwalker, and he slags Ortega’s partner Samir Abboud and stabs her.
Episode 6

Man with My Face

Kovacs races Ortega to hospital, chooses her a full mechanical arm and charges it to Bancroft; at her bedside a remembered Quell keeps him company. Poe starts training Lizzie to fight in virtual. Dimi and Leung report to a Meth in virtual called Hemingway. When Chief Tanaka brings flowers, Kovacs says the Meths have bought him, and Ortega beats a name out of him with the new arm. Meanwhile Dimi escapes, to Carnage and into Kovacs’s original sleeve. He kills everyone at a virtual-reality café in Oakland and ambushes Kovacs and Ortega, and the fight ends in the Fight Drome: Carnage’s gene-freak gladiators, then Dimi’s poisoned blades. They tear out his stack and Ortega crushes it. Then a masked swordswoman cuts down Carnage’s men and unmasks: his sister Reileen, alive.

A dark-haired woman sitting up in a hospital bed flexes a dark metal mechanical arm while a man in a white shirt sits watching her and a tall woman with curly hair stands in the shadows behind him.
S1 · 11 The New Arm Episode 6: Kovacs races Ortega to hospital, chooses her a full mechanical arm and has Bancroft pay for it. While she heals, a remembered Quell keeps him company at the bedside — the dead woman he has never stopped talking to. The arm is tested soon enough: when Chief Tanaka brings flowers and Kovacs says the Meths have bought him, Ortega beats a name out of him with it.
In a smoky underground arena, a masked woman in green layered robes stands over fallen guards with a lowered sword while, in front, a sweating, wounded man is held up by a woman with a metal arm.
S1 · 12 The Masked Swordswoman Episode 6 ends back in the Fight Drome. Dimi has escaped into Kovacs’s own original sleeve, and the fight runs through Carnage’s gene-freak gladiators to Dimi’s poisoned blades before Kovacs and Ortega tear out his stack and she crushes it. Then Carnage’s men come, and a masked swordswoman cuts them down. She unmasks — Rei, his sister — and carries the poisoned Kovacs off to her house in the clouds.
Episode 7

Nora Inu

Poisoned, Kovacs wakes in Rei’s house in Head in the Clouds. The season’s longest episode is memory. On Harlan’s World their father kills their mother, and young Tak kills him to save his sister Reileen; Jaeger recruits the boy into CTAC with a promise of a safe home for her, and lies. Grown, Kovacs leads a raid on a Yakuza boss and finds Rei among the Yakuza; the two of them kill both sides and run into the forest, where the Envoys capture them and chain him on a rope bridge. Quell trains him while Rei watches, jealous. Quell means to strike the Protectorate’s core and end resurrection, and on a beach she tells him who she is: Nadia Makita, who invented the stack. They become lovers. Then CTAC hits Stronghold with a virus that drives the Envoys mad; Jimmy De Soto shouts for the Uprising before Kovacs slags his stack, and the shuttle carrying Quell and Rei explodes in the sky. In the present Kovacs finds Rei’s hidden pods and understands: she was the museum schoolgirl, Clarissa Severin and Hemingway, and she betrayed the Envoys to live, with a backup waiting.

On a dusk shoreline of dark rocks a black-haired man and a woman with a crown of curly hair sit side by side, her hand over his, looking out at a sea under a low red sun.
S1 · 13 Nadia Makita Episode 7, on Harlan’s World: here the Envoys are not the Protectorate’s elite but Quellcrist Falconer’s rebels, and she trains the runaway CTAC soldier herself. On a beach she tells him who she is — Nadia Makita, the scientist who invented the stack — and the Uprising is her war on her own invention. They become lovers. In the novels Quell is a revolutionary who died long before Kovacs was born.
In a vast cavern lit blue by a glowing alien tree, a black-haired man crouches beside a fallen comrade as armoured soldiers in skull-like helmets advance out of the haze.
S1 · 14 Stronghold Falls Episode 7: CTAC comes for Stronghold with a virus that drives the Envoys mad. Jimmy De Soto shouts for the Uprising before Kovacs slags his stack, and the shuttle carrying Quell and Rei explodes in the sky. Back in the present, Kovacs learns why it went so wrong: Rei sold the Envoys out to live, and had a backup waiting. She was the museum schoolgirl, and Clarissa Severin, and Hemingway.
Episode 8

Clash by Night

Rei explains. She wanted to live; she got Bancroft to spin her brother up; she is a Meth now, and she wants the case closed. He holds her own sword to her throat and lets it drop — she has clones. Leung is hers, and so is the Wei Clinic, and she threatens his friends. So Kovacs asks for a dipper and gets Ava Elliot out of Alcatraz, in a man’s sleeve; at the Raven, Lizzie, in virtual, knows her mother at once. To keep Ortega out of Leung’s way, he dismisses her cruelly. Poe infects a rival AI with Rawling over a card game, Ava fakes street footage of Bancroft entering that AI’s brothel, and Kovacs sells Bancroft the answer: he caught the virus there and killed himself to keep it out of his backups. Bancroft pays and pardons him, and fires Prescott, whom Kovacs has framed. Ortega traces Rei’s DNA to a clone vault at Psychasec, kills the clones that attack her, stops to comfort a little girl — another of Rei’s sleeves — and is taken.

In a curved white stateroom lined with couture gowns on dressmaker’s forms, a man holds a sword to the throat of a black-haired woman in green who does not flinch.
S1 · 15 Her Own Sword Episode 8: Rei explains herself. She wanted to live; she got Bancroft to spin her brother up; she is a Meth now, Leung and the Wei Clinic are hers, and she wants the case closed. Kovacs puts her own sword to her throat, then lets it drop — she has clones. The novel’s Reileen Kawahara is a crime boss he once worked for. The show makes her the little sister he killed a man to save.
In a softly glowing Victorian parlour, a young woman in a grey dress reaches up to touch the face of a stocky middle-aged man who stands very still.
S1 · 16 Lizzie Knows Her Mother Episode 8: Kovacs asks for a dipper and gets Ava Elliot out of Alcatraz, in a man’s sleeve. In virtual at the Raven her daughter Lizzie, still healing under Poe’s care, knows her at once. Then the team goes to work: Poe infects a rival AI with the Rawling virus over a card game, Ava fakes footage of Bancroft entering that AI’s brothel, and Kovacs has a false solution to sell.
Episode 9

Rage in Heaven

A wounded Ortega staggers into the Raven, and as Kovacs tends her he realises it is Rei, wearing her sleeve. Rei has Ortega, and has sent Leung after her family; Kovacs reaches the Ortega house too late. The episode doubles back to the plan: Ava, Vernon, Poe and Mickey, a police technician, refuse to be sent away. With Isaac’s confiscated gene printer he prints a copy of the Ryker sleeve and, illegally, double-sleeves himself into it; the two Kovacses play rock-paper-scissors, and the copy leaves with Miriam as a decoy. Elliot, posing as a senior military officer, drives into Head in the Clouds with Kovacs hidden in the car. Through an antenna Ava built, Kovacs uploads Rawling, destroys Rei’s clones and backups, and records her confession. She had Bancroft dosed with the drug Stallion, he killed a sex worker in the frenzy, and she used it to blackmail him into opposing Resolution 653, which would let murder victims with religious coding testify; he killed himself to erase the memory. Mary Lou saw it and leapt to her death, hoping to be resleeved, not knowing that Rei had given all her workers religious coding. Then Leung knifes Elliot, and the guards take them.

Two identical men in white shirts face each other across a small table under a hanging lamp, each holding out a fist.
S1 · 17 Rock, Paper, Scissors Episode 9: Rei staggers into the Raven wearing Ortega’s sleeve and, found out, tells her brother she has Ortega; Leung kills Ortega’s family before Kovacs can reach them. His answer is a crime. With Isaac’s confiscated gene printer he prints a copy of the Ryker sleeve and double-sleeves himself into it; the two Kovacses play rock-paper-scissors, and the copy leaves with Miriam as a decoy. The novel’s Kovacs plays the same game.
A bearded man in a dark officer’s uniform pilots an aircar through the night toward a vast bloated airship studded with lights, high above a glittering city and bay.
S1 · 18 Into Head in the Clouds Episode 9: Vernon Elliot, playing a high-ranking military officer, drives into Head in the Clouds with Kovacs hidden in the car. Through an antenna Ava built, Kovacs uploads Rawling, destroys Rei’s clones and backups, and records her confession: she had Bancroft drugged, he killed a sex worker in the frenzy, and she used it to turn him against Resolution 653. Mary Lou, who saw it, leapt from the airship hoping to be resleeved.
Episode 10

The Killers

Leung makes Ortega relive her family’s murder in virtual until Kovacs pulls her out. Rei hands her brother a gun to execute one of his friends; he puts it to his own head, and it is empty. At the Raven Leung kills Mickey, takes Ava and infects Poe with a virus. Dying, Poe says goodbye to Lizzie and sends her mind through the network into a synthetic body aboard the airship, then reads the last lines of “The Raven”. Aboard, Lizzie kills the guards and frees the others. Ortega kills Leung with his own weapon. Losing the duel, Rei says Quell’s stack was backed up and only she knows where; Kovacs shoots her through the stack anyway. The Elliots cut the power, and Head in the Clouds crashes into the bay with Kovacs aboard, holding his sister.

Debriefed in virtual, he keeps his pardon for one copy only; the two Kovacses settle it with the same game, the decoy is erased, and the survivor is put into the decoy’s printed copy of Ryker’s body. The confession and Lizzie’s testimony bring down both Bancrofts: Laurens leaves Isaac in charge, and Lizzie reveals that Miriam beat her after she came to tell Laurens she was pregnant. Ava gets her own body back, Lizzie stays in a synth, and 653 passes. Kovacs makes ready to give the Ryker sleeve back, says goodbye to Ortega, takes what is left of Poe’s emitter and goes looking for Quell, whose voice, over the last scene, says she sleeps, waiting to be woken.

Down a curving white corridor a tall woman in a dark armoured bodysuit strides forward with a long knife held low, her pale face perfectly still.
S1 · 19 Lizzie in the Synth Episode 10: at the Raven, Leung kills Mickey, takes Ava and infects Poe. Dying, Poe says goodbye to Lizzie, sends her mind through the network to the airship, where it wakes in a synthetic body, and reads the last lines of “The Raven”. The woman Kovacs first met as a trauma loop is the new hero the episode promised: she kills the guards and frees the prisoners. Den of Geek found more nobility in Poe’s sacrifice than in anything the humans did.
On the glossy floor of a white stateroom, a man kneels holding a limp woman in green in his arms as the curved window fills with the glow of the city and flames.
S1 · 20 Brother and Sister Episode 10: Ortega kills Leung with his own weapon. Rei, losing the duel, plays her last card — Quell’s stack was backed up, and only she knows where — and her brother kills her anyway. The Elliots cut the power, and Head in the Clouds goes down into the bay in fire with Kovacs still aboard, holding her. The body dies in the crash; the stack does not.
In a small apartment among half-unpacked boxes, a woman with a metal arm and a man in a white shirt stand close, her hand on his chest, in grey morning light.
S1 · 21 Goodbye, Lieutenant The epilogue: debriefed in virtual, Kovacs keeps his pardon for one copy only, and the decoy who went with Miriam is erased. Laurens and Miriam are arrested — Lizzie testifies that Miriam beat her when she came to tell Laurens she was pregnant — Ava gets her own body back and Resolution 653 passes. Kovacs makes ready to give Ryker his body back, says goodbye to Ortega, collects what is left of Poe’s emitter and goes looking for Quell.

What it took from the books

  • The spine is Book I’s. Bancroft hiring a resleeved Kovacs to solve his own death; the Ryker sleeve and Ortega’s tie to it; Miriam and her pheromones; the empty AI hotel and its ceiling guns; the Wei Clinic; the fight venue; Prescott, Carnage, Suntouch House, the songspire, Resolution 653; the Rawling virus planted in a brothel as the false solution; the double-sleeve decoy and the scissors-paper-stone game; Head in the Clouds. Production designer Carey Meyer turned the novel’s bubblefab communities into Bridgetown’s container villages on the old bridge.
  • The Envoys change sides. In the novels they are the Protectorate’s elite and Kovacs an ex-member who drifted into crime; here they are Quell’s rebels on Harlan’s World, wiped out in the Uprising, and he is the last of them, a captured terrorist on ice for 250 years.
  • Quell lives. The books’ Quellcrist Falconer is a long-dead revolutionary Kovacs quotes. Kalogridis made her his trainer and lover — “She was the reason I wanted to do it,” she said — and made her, too, the inventor of the stack. Her real name, Nadia Makita, comes from Woken Furies; the stack is the show’s. Virginia Vidaura, the trainer of the books, shrinks to a minor Envoy.
  • Reileen Kawahara becomes Rei, his sister — saved from their father as a child, a Yakuza enforcer, an Envoy who betrayed the Uprising to live — and owns the Wei Clinic as well as Head in the Clouds. The childhood killing and Jaeger’s recruitment are the show’s; the book’s father simply walks out on the family in a new body.
  • The Hendrix becomes the Raven. “The Hendrix estate doesn’t license his image for anything that they consider to be violent,” Kalogridis explained, so the AI took Poe’s persona and a Victorian hotel; his card games, his therapy for Lizzie and his death are the show’s.
  • The Elliotts become Vernon, Ava and Lizzie. Irene’s borrowed body was a woman’s; Ava’s is a man’s. The book’s Elizabeth is murdered offstage; Lizzie is broken, healed and armed. Her pregnancy and Miriam’s beating recall the book’s Leila Begin, Laurens’s pregnant lover, whom Miriam attacked.
  • Ortega grows a family — parents, a grandmother spun up for Día de los Muertos, a houseful of relatives whom Leung murders — plus a mechanical arm, a captivity in which Rei wears her sleeve, and the kill that ends Leung. Her book partner, Bautista, becomes Samir Abboud.
  • Cut and invented: Trepp is gone (a different Trepp turns up in season 2) and the invented ghostwalker Leung does her work; Kadmin, “Dimi the Twin” and an illegal double-sleever in the book too, becomes two separate copies, the hitman Poe slags in episode 1 and the twin who carries on; Isaac, the clone alibi and Naomi in Miriam’s sleeve are new. The book’s torture puts Kovacs in a woman’s sleeve; the show keeps him in Ryker’s and intercuts Quell’s lessons.
  • The ending: in both, the mind that went aboard the airship is the one kept and the copy with Miriam is erased. In the book Kovacs and Kawahara fall into the ocean, Miriam walks free with the only evidence, and Kovacs is sent home; on screen the airship comes down in the bay, both Bancrofts are arrested, and Kovacs goes after Quell. See the books vs. the series.

Continuity notes

  • Kovacs ends pardoned and leaving Bay City to look for Quell, giving the Ryker sleeve back and carrying what is left of Poe’s emitter. Season 2 finds him thirty years later, in a new sleeve, on Harlan’s World.
  • Quell has been believed dead since the shuttle exploded over Stronghold; Rei’s last words claim her stack was backed up. Season 2 is the search.
  • Reileen is dead, real death, her clones and backups destroyed by Rawling. Leung, both Dimis, Mickey, Samir Abboud, Anemone and Ortega’s family are dead; Poe appears to die of Leung’s virus, and season 2 brings him back, glitching.
  • The Bancrofts are under arrest and Isaac runs the family; Prescott has been fired. Ortega stays in Bay City with a mechanical arm and Ryker coming back. Ava is in her own body, Lizzie in a synth, Vernon alive. Resolution 653 has passed.

Notes

  • Every title is a classic film noir: Out of the Past (1947), Fallen Angel (1945), In a Lonely Place (1950), Force of Evil (1948), The Wrong Man (1956), The Man with My Face (1951), Nora Inu (Kurosawa’s Stray Dog, 1949), Clash by Night (1952), Rage in Heaven (1941), The Killers (1946). No production statement explaining the choice has turned up, but the pilot’s director named Out of the Past among his influences, and season 2 kept the habit.
  • Directors: Miguel Sapochnik (1), Nick Hurran (2–3), Alex Graves (4, 6), Uta Briesewitz (5, 8), Andy Goddard (7), Peter Hoar (9–10). Episodes run 46 minutes (6) to 66 (7).
  • The street of the Grounders was one huge indoor set in a converted printing-press building; the Raven was built in full except its dome, which is digital. The pilot was Emmy-nominated for its visual effects, as was the main title design.
  • Reception was split between the look and the story: 70% on Rotten Tomatoes from 97 reviews, 64 on Metacritic. The Guardian thought “the flash is blinding”; Vulture called it “somehow simultaneously grimy and glossy”. Of the finale, Kalogridis said: “It’s a very noir ending. It’s freakin’ dark.”
  • Netflix renewed the series in July 2018 for eight episodes with a new Kovacs, Anthony Mackie, and cancelled it in August 2020 after season 2.
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