A tall, muscular man in a long dark coat stands on a rooftop at night above a city of needle-thin towers, as a forked bolt of blue fire crackles across the sky beneath a dark orbital platform.
Harlan’s World, thirty years after Bay City: Takeshi Kovacs, in a new combat sleeve, under the Angels that guard his home planet’s sky.

Altered Carbon · Netflix · Season 2 · 2020

Season 2

Thirty years after Bay City, Takeshi Kovacs wakes in a new combat sleeve on Harlan’s World, with a dead Meth behind him and Quellcrist Falconer somewhere close.

Altered Carbon’s second season — eight episodes, all released by Netflix on 27 February 2020 — moves the show thirty years on and off Earth, to Harlan’s World, the ocean planet of Morgan’s third novel, ringed by ancient alien orbital guns the show calls Angels. Takeshi Kovacs has spent those thirty years looking for Quellcrist Falconer, whose stack, Reileen claimed at the end of season 1, was backed up.

He has a new body, and a new actor: Anthony Mackie takes over from Joel Kinnaman. Alison Schapker, named sole showrunner in May 2019 (Laeta Kalogridis stayed on as an executive producer and wrote the opener), said what drew her was a semi-anthology in which “every season would be a new sleeve”. The season was shot in metro Vancouver from February to June 2019, mostly at Skydance Studios in Surrey; the city’s Civic Plaza stood in for a Harlan’s World square.

It adapts no single novel. It takes Woken Furies’ spine — Kovacs home, angelfire, a Quell who may not be herself, a copy of Kovacs sent to hunt him, the Harlan family — and dresses it with names from Broken Angels and Altered Carbon, on top of season 1’s own inventions: Quell as Kovacs’s lover, the Envoys as her rebels, Stronghold, Jaeger, Reileen as his sister, and Poe. It was the show’s last season.

Episode 1

Phantom Lady

In an off-world nightclub several men claim to be Takeshi Kovacs and brawl over it. The real one is the torch singer, cross-sleeved in a woman’s body, there to collect a payment. A bounty hunter, Trepp, offers him a job; he refuses, and she shoots him in the back. In virtuality an ancient Meth, Horace Axley, offers him an advanced sleeve and the location of Quell if he will be Axley’s protection. He accepts, and wakes fighting the body, a mirror shattered, a shard in his chest, Axley and his security dead. Through the window hangs an Angel: he is on Harlan’s World, the planet he and Poe have avoided for thirty years.

On a plaza holo the governor, Danica Harlan, daughter of the founder Konrad Harlan, announces a truce with the Quellist leader Joshua Kemp in a war over mining access; privately she calls it temporary. Kovacs’s old safe house is now a Yakuza cookhouse for the drug Reaper. He walks in, fights, is overpowered and is taken to an old ally, Tanaseda Hideki, who denies killing Axley, shows him a Songspire, warns that the hunt for Quell will become an obsession and gives him the building. Poe, his code already corrupted, uploads into it: the Nevermore. Kovacs has his ouroboros tattoo inked again; Colonel Carrera of CTAC takes the Axley case and names him the killer. Alone, Kovacs talks to his subconscious in Quell’s form. The sleeve has its own memory, she tells him, and when he stabs himself where the shard went in, he remembers who put it there: Quell.

In a smoky nightclub hung with red-shaded lamps, a woman in a long dark gown sings at a microphone on a small stage while a woman in black straps and long gloves watches from a table, a pistol in her lap.
S2 · 1 The Torch Singer The season opens off-world, in a nightclub where several men claim to be Takeshi Kovacs and brawl over it. The real one is on stage: the torch singer, cross-sleeved in a woman’s body, there to collect a payment. Trepp, a bounty hunter, has come with a job offer. He collects, says no, and she shoots him in the back. The Meth who sent her does not take no for an answer.
In a dark, high apartment a tall muscular man with one hand pressed to his chest and a pale man in a Victorian frock coat look out of a tall window at a dark orbital platform in the night sky, while a man lies still on a sofa behind them.
S2 · 2 An Angel in the Window In virtuality an ancient Meth, Horace Axley, offers him an advanced sleeve and the location of Quellcrist Falconer if he will be Axley’s protection. Kovacs wakes fighting the body, a shard of mirror in his chest; in the next room Axley and his guards lie dead, the old Meth’s veins gone black. Then he and Poe see what hangs in the sky: an Angel, one of the orbital platforms of Harlan’s World. They are home, on the one planet they have avoided for thirty years.
In a dim room of dark timber and paper screens, an old white-haired man touches the pale, upright branches of a strange slender tree while a tall, muscular man in black listens.
S2 · 3 Tanaseda’s Songspire His old safe house is now a Yakuza cookhouse for the drug Reaper. Kovacs walks in, fights, is overpowered and is taken to an old ally from before the Battle of Stronghold, Tanaseda Hideki, who swears he did not kill Axley, shows him a Songspire, warns that the hunt for Quell will become an obsession, and gives him the building. Poe, his code already corrupted, uploads into it, and it becomes the Nevermore.
Episode 2

Payment Deferred

CTAC takes the crime scene and slags the local detectives to leave no trace. Carrera’s unit, the Wedge, is made entirely of upgraded sleeves like Kovacs’s, which makes him CTAC’s business. Danica wants CTAC off her world; her adviser Dugan warns that in their hands the Angel Array could erase every stack. At the Nevermore, Poe glitches — images of Lizzie Elliot surface — and leaves himself defrag instructions on sticky notes rather than reboot and forget her.

In a gun-shop shoot-out Kovacs kills a stack thief who is about to scalp Trepp and trades the stolen stacks for what she knows: Axley was being blackmailed, had called his partners about Quell, and two of them were Anton Durov and Haruki Okada. Hideki sends him to the Soul Market, a club where stacks are worthless but memories sell. Anton and Haruki load him one — Quell killing CTAC troopers and civilians — and Kovacs insists someone is riding her sleeve. Then Quell walks in and kills everyone, them included. She and Kovacs fight through the bar until she says his name, and she is gone before Carrera arrives to arrest him.

In a dark curved office under a white ring light, a woman in a crimson suit faces a bearded man in a high-collared black leather coat across a wide desk, a wall of softly glowing lattice screens behind her.
S2 · 4 The Governor and the Colonel Colonel Carrera of CTAC has taken the Axley case, slagged the local detectives to leave no trace, and claimed Kovacs as his business: the new sleeve is a Wedge sleeve, the kind his own elite unit wears. At a meeting about ore shipments he pushes Danica Harlan, the planet’s governor, to keep fighting the miners. She wants CTAC off her world, and her adviser Dugan warns that in CTAC’s hands the Angel Array could erase every stack.
In a wrecked club of overturned tables and broken glass, a man in black and a woman with a crown of curly hair face each other a pace apart in the half-dark.
S2 · 5 Quell at the Soul Market Hideki sends Kovacs to the Soul Market, a club where stacks are worthless but the memories on them sell. Axley’s partners Anton Durov and Haruki Okada load him one: Quell killing troopers and civilians. Someone is riding her sleeve, he insists. Then Quell walks in and kills everyone in the room. She and Kovacs fight through the bar until she says his name, and she is gone before Carrera comes to arrest him.
Episode 3

Nightmare Alley

Carrera and Danica question him about a weapon that could destroy every DHF backup, and Danica sentences him to the Circle, a televised execution. Carrera reveals who he is: Jaeger, Kovacs’s old CTAC commander, in a new sleeve. Drugged, Kovacs fights mercenaries in synthetic sleeves wearing the faces of Ortega, Elliot and Rei, while the Meths bet. Poe has found Harlan’s World’s chapter of the AI union, the AI Archaeologue Club, and Dig 301, an archaeologue AI idle since Danica shut the dig sites; together they try to cut the power. The fourth synth should wear Quell’s face; the real Quell has taken her place, and when a Quellist technician kills the lights the two escape. Trepp, hunting a Quellist recruiter, Anil, at the Mandrake Mines, is jailed; she and her wife Myka spend their savings on her bail, and she turns to Kovacs’s rising bounty. Jaeger activates Project Evergreen. At the Nevermore, Quell no longer knows who she is.

In a floodlit steel arena ringed by dark crowds, a muscular man in black squares up against a woman in layered green raising a katana.
S2 · 6 The Circle Carrera has pulled the people Kovacs loved out of his memory, and revealed who he is: Jaeger, Kovacs’s old CTAC commander, in a new sleeve. Drugged, Kovacs is thrown into the Circle, a televised execution the planet is made to watch while the Meths bet, and made to fight, one after another, mercenaries in synth sleeves wearing the faces of Ortega, Elliot and Rei. The fourth should wear Quell’s. The real Quell takes her place, and when the power dies they escape together.
In a dim, lamplit club room of dark wood, a pale man in a Victorian frock coat and high collar gives a small bow to a woman in an olive field jacket with long wavy hair.
S2 · 7 The Archaeologue Club Poe, glitching and losing pieces of himself, calls the AI union and finds Harlan’s World’s chapter, the AI Archaeologue Club. There he meets Dig 301, an archaeologue AI with nothing to dig since Danica shut the excavation sites. She becomes his friend, his help with the defrag he keeps putting off, and in the end his successor at the Nevermore. First, together, they try to cut the Circle’s power.
Episode 4

Shadow of a Doubt

When Trepp finds the Nevermore, Kovacs, furious, fires Poe and hires Dig. Masked in the Harlan’s Day crowds, he makes a deal with Trepp: he will help find her brother, Anil Imani. Jaeger threatens Hideki and crushes a branch of his Songspire. Shown Danica’s propaganda calling her a mass murderer, Quell hears from Kovacs her real name and purpose, and they are lovers again.

The holiday turns. Danica straps Quellist prisoners into the celebration rockets, and Angelfire shoots them down as a show for the Meths. Quell kills Hideki and his backups as she killed Axley; reading the old man’s dying stack in virtuality, Kovacs learns the truth. Dugan runs for the casting station and Quell murders him there. Quell is killing the Founders, and the one left is Konrad Harlan. She destroys the main transfer point, cutting the planet off from interstellar travel. And Jaeger welcomes Project Evergreen: a second Kovacs.

Through a festival street crowded with lanterns and masked revellers, a tall man in a black cowl and a dark face mask pushes toward a woman in black waiting in a red-lit club doorway.
S2 · 8 Harlan’s Day Quell remembers nothing of Stronghold, nor what Kovacs looked like then. When Trepp finds the Nevermore, Kovacs fires Poe and hires Dig 301. Then, masked and hooded through the Harlan’s Day crowds, he goes to Trepp and makes a deal: he will help find her brother, the Quellist recruiter Anil Imani. She has her own stakes — a wife, Myka, and a son, TJ, in a replacement sleeve since a Quellist landmine.
On a high terrace at night a woman in a crimson suit watches as lances of blue fire strike down from a dark orbital platform at rockets bursting over a city of thin towers.
S2 · 9 Fireworks Danica’s Harlan’s Day party ends with a show for the Meths: Quellist prisoners strapped into the celebration rockets and shot down by Angelfire, the orbital defence. Before the episode is out Quell has killed Tanaseda Hideki and Dugan, and Kovacs sees the pattern: she is killing the Founders, and the one left is Konrad Harlan. She destroys the main transfer point, cutting the planet off. And Jaeger’s Project Evergreen wakes: a second Kovacs.
Episode 5

I Wake Up Screaming

Kovacs Prime is an old CTAC-era copy of Kovacs, double-sleeved in a body like the one he was born in. Jaeger tells him the “clone” killed their sister Rei, and orders him to kill the clone and Quell. Kemp declares war on the feeds; Danica invokes provision 532 for absolute control of the planet and arrests the Meths. Prime traces Kovacs through Tanaseda’s residence; Hideki’s great-grandson Yukito leads the Yakuza against the Nevermore, the Wedge slags him, and Kovacs, Quell and Trepp go over a balcony. Prime overrides Dig with a root password. Trepp’s estranged father, the black-market gun dealer Lucas Imani, tells her Anil worked for the Quellists. Poe goes into a Renouncer construct to question Konrad Harlan and finds only a lie Danica pays for: Harlan is not there.

Through a hatch in his old village and the mine tunnels, Kovacs leads Quell and Trepp to Stronghold, the Envoys’ old headquarters. Quell asks Trepp to kill her if her mind goes for good. Under a Songspire she finds the pod she was kept in, knocks Trepp out and runs. On the cliffs the two Kovacs meet, and Prime throws the other off the edge.

In a glowing golden haze a lean man with shoulder-length black hair in a black leather jacket stands with folded arms, studying a ghostly image of a tall, muscular man in black.
S2 · 10 Evergreen Kovacs Prime is Kovacs as he was: an old CTAC-era copy of his stack, illegally double-sleeved by Jaeger in a body like the one he was born in. In virtuality Jaeger briefs him with lies — the other Kovacs, the “clone”, killed their sister Rei — and orders him to kill the clone and Quell. If the double-sleeving comes out, both copies face real death. Prime takes command of the Wedge and goes hunting.
On a high sea cliff at sunset, a long-haired man in a black leather jacket lunges and shoves a tall, powerfully built man in black off the brink from behind, above a long drop to a grey beach.
S2 · 11 Two Kovacs Through a hatch in his old village and the mine tunnels, Kovacs leads Quell and Trepp to Stronghold, the Envoys’ old headquarters, hoping her memories are there. Quell asks Trepp to kill her if her mind goes for good; under a Songspire she finds the pod she was kept in, puts Trepp down with a neck-hold and runs. On the cliffs Kovacs meets the man he was in his CTAC days, and Prime throws him off the edge.
Episode 6

Bury Me Dead

At the lake beside Stronghold Quell’s memories return. Prime, sent to kill her, poses as the real Kovacs, and she shows him where Rei kept her for centuries, torturing each new clone. Trepp hauls Kovacs up the cliff and sets his bones; they take out two of Carrera’s team and Kemp’s fighters kill the rest. Tied up, Kovacs tells Prime the truth about Jaeger and about Rei, and Prime changes sides. Trepp sees Anil’s stack among the trophies around Kemp’s neck: Kemp works for Danica, and the war is staged. Danica has Kemp shot, and arrests Carrera for the double-sleeving. As Protectorate soldiers close in on the four, Angelfire burns them where they stand. Quell seems to have called it down.

In a cavern of huge pale roots glowing blue, a woman with curly hair rests a hand on an empty glass coffin while a long-haired man in a black leather jacket stands just behind her at the foot of the stairs.
S2 · 12 Under the Songspire At the lake beside Stronghold Quell’s memories come back. Prime, sent to kill her, tells her he is the real Kovacs, to learn about the weapon, and she takes him down to where Rei kept her buried for centuries: a glass pod beneath the Songspire’s roots, and recordings of Reileen casting her into each new clone and torturing her, the last of them thirty years ago. Above, Trepp hauls the other Kovacs up the cliff and sets his bones.
At the edge of a pine forest at night, a woman with a crown of curly hair raises one arm to the sky beside a kneeling man in black shading his eyes, as straight beams of blue light stab down among the trees behind a line of helmeted soldiers advancing across a clearing.
S2 · 13 Angelfire Tied up, Kovacs tells Prime the truth: Jaeger sold Rei to the Yakuza, erased Prime’s memories and lied, and Kovacs killed Rei himself, on Head in the Clouds, because she asked him to. Prime changes sides. Trepp sees her brother’s stack among the trophies around Kemp’s neck: the rebel leader works for Danica, and the war is staged. Danica has Kemp shot; Protectorate soldiers close in, and Angelfire burns them where they stand. Quell seems to have called it down.
Episode 7

Experiment Perilous

Ash falls on the forest. Danica’s soldiers take Prime; Quell’s sleeve begins to fail. In Anil’s memories Trepp learns he woke Quell and was infected by the invader in her stack. Danica, now wanting the woman who seems to command Angelfire, makes a deal with the imprisoned Jaeger. Kovacs and Poe make up; Poe and “Ms Dig” build a construct and send Quell and Kovacs into it, and Jaeger and Prime slip in after. Trepp borrows Kovacs’s empty sleeve to rescue Myka and TJ.

Inside, the invader shows itself: an Elder, one of the beings whose world this was, borrowing Quell’s body. It shows them Konrad Harlan underground, shooting the Elders’ unborn children in their nursery — the Founders’ genocide, and its reason for killing them. Quell gets out. Dig, finding she is being tracked, shuts herself down. Jaeger stays behind, and the Elder takes his body; because Quell broke her promise, it now means to destroy everything.

In a vast dark cavern threaded with pale roots, a grey-haired man in a navy high-collared tunic raises a rifle among rows of great dark pods, watched by a woman with curly hair in the foreground.
S2 · 14 The Founders’ Crime Quell’s sleeve is failing. Poe and “Ms Dig” build a construct and send her and Kovacs inside; while his mind is away, Trepp borrows his sleeve to rescue Myka and TJ from Danica. In the construct the thing in Quell shows itself — an Elder, one of the beings whose world this was — and shows them why it kills: Konrad Harlan and the Founders underground, shooting the Elders’ unborn children in their nursery.
In a murky rocky darkness, an immense winged creature with veined wings spread wide rears over a bearded man in a black high-collared coat who stumbles back.
S2 · 15 The Elder Takes Jaeger Quell gets out of the construct. Jaeger, who followed them in, lures Prime back to his side and sends him out, but stays behind himself, and a winged being comes for him there: the Elder takes his body. Because Quell broke her promise to it, it no longer wants only the Founders dead; it means to destroy everything. At the Nevermore, Dig finds she is being tracked and shuts herself down.
Episode 8

Broken Angels

The finale takes the title of Morgan’s second novel. Prime turns on the soldiers he leads into the Nevermore. The Elder, in Carrera’s body, sets about turning the Orbitals; Semetaire, keeper of the Soul Market, confronts it and dies. Trepp finds her father’s stack snapped and quits; Prime talks her back. Kovacs means to give the Elder Konrad Harlan, but Danica had already killed her father and destroyed his stack and every backup. Poe, glitching too badly to find Angelfire’s convergence point, must reboot, which for him is close to death. Quell’s plan is to take the Elder back into herself and turn Angelfire on her own body.

At the needlecast station Danica double-crosses them, and the Elder kills her. While Prime holds Quell down, Kovacs takes her place: he kills Jaeger, lets the Elder into his own stack and turns Angelfire on himself. Both die the real death. Prime, now the only Kovacs on record, has nothing to answer for; Trepp takes over her father’s workshop; Quell leaves for a new world. Three months on, Dig, renamed Annabel, runs the Nevermore and welcomes back a rebooted Poe with no memories — whose last act was to back up a mind. Schapker confirmed whose: Kovacs’s.

Critics liked it better than season 1: 81 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes (season 1 had 70), 65 on Metacritic, while the site’s audience score was 37. Carey Meyer, the production designer, said the season had “less money because the success of the show was not as blockbuster” as Netflix had hoped. Netflix decided in April 2020 not to order a third season; Deadline reported it on 26 August: the decision is “not COVID-related but stems from the streamer’s standard viewership vs. cost renewal review process”. Schapker’s third season would have sent Quell off to restart the uprising, kept Prime inside the Protectorate, and asked whose body Kovacs’s stack would end up in. As of 2026 there is no revival; the copy is still waiting for a sleeve.

On a high platform at the foot of a needle-like tower, a tall man in black looks up into a beam of blue light falling from the night sky, while behind him a long-haired man holds back a straining woman.
S2 · 16 Real Death Danica had already killed her father and destroyed every copy of him, so there is no Konrad Harlan to hand over. Quell’s plan is harder: kill Jaeger, take the Elder back into herself, and turn Angelfire on her own body. At the needlecast station Danica double-crosses them and the Elder, in Carrera’s body, kills her. While Prime holds Quell down, Kovacs takes her place: he kills Jaeger, lets the Elder in, and turns the fire on himself.
In a mended Victorian hotel bar with bright stained-glass windows, a woman with long wavy hair smiles from behind the bar at a pale man in a frock coat who looks around as if for the first time.
S2 · 17 Annabel Prime tells the Protectorate commission that Quell and Kovacs are gone; as the only Kovacs left, he has no double-sleeve to answer for. Trepp takes over her father’s workshop; Quell leaves to find a new world. Three months on, Dig, renamed Annabel after Poe’s “Annabel Lee”, runs the Nevermore, and Poe comes back to her remembering nothing. His last act before the reboot was to back up a mind. It was Kovacs’s.

What it took from the books

  • Not one novel. Season 2 takes the setting and spine of Woken Furies and dresses it with names from Broken Angels and Altered Carbon, on top of season 1’s own inventions. Kalogridis said in 2018 that Morgan spent a couple of weeks in the writers’ room helping them use Broken Angels without its scale — “That’s a very expensive book!”
  • From Woken Furies: Kovacs back on Harlan’s World under the orbitals and their angelfire; a Quellcrist Falconer who may not be herself, split between two minds, whose identity is put to the test, and who calls angelfire down on her captors (the novel’s climax; Episode 6 here); a copy of Kovacs double-sleeved to hunt the original; the Harlan family; Harlan’s Day; the Renouncers’ virtuality; Dig 301; and the names Tanaseda, Anton and Jack Soul Brasil.
  • The double, turned round. In the novel the Harlans’ security chief, Aiura, wakes an Envoy-era copy of Kovacs, nearly two hundred years in storage, who stays loyal, despises his older self and dies; the older Kovacs lives. On screen Jaeger wakes Kovacs Prime in a sleeve matching his birth sleeve; Prime changes sides and survives, and the older Kovacs dies.
  • Quell, made present. The book’s Falconer died about three hundred years earlier; a copy of her, made by the angelfire, surfaces in the implants of the deCom head Sylvie Oshima. The show’s Quell is Kovacs’s lover from season 1, in her own body, kept by Rei under a Songspire for centuries. Sylvie and her crew are cut.
  • From Broken Angels: Carrera and his Wedge (the book’s Isaac Carrera, a mercenary commander on Sanction IV whom Kovacs serves and kills; here Jaeger under a new name), Joshua Kemp (Sanction IV’s revolutionary; here Danica’s stooge), Semetaire and the Soul Market, the Mandrake name, Veutin, and the finale’s title.
  • From Altered Carbon: the name Trepp — Kawahara’s mercenary, cut from season 1 — given to a new character, a bounty hunter with a wife, a son and a brother in the Quellists.
  • Invented: the Elders as a living species whose unborn children the Founders murdered (the books’ aliens are the Martians, gone, Morgan told Inverse, for tens of thousands of years or more; the show keeps one alive), the Elder in Quell’s stack, the Founders, Danica Harlan and her patricide, the firework executions, Angelfire as a weapon that could erase every stack, Poe’s decay and reboot, and Kovacs’s real death. The novel’s Kovacs is waging a private war on the Knights of the New Revelation, who cut out and sank the stacks of Sarah Sachilowska and her daughter; the show’s has spent thirty years searching for Quell.
  • Cut: Sylvie Oshima and her crew, New Hokkaido, the Knights of the New Revelation, Virginia Vidaura’s part in the story (season 1 had made her a minor Envoy), the Little Blue Bugs, Aiura and Mitzi Harlan, and Todor Murakami’s Envoys. The full comparison is on Books vs. the series.

Continuity notes

  • Kovacs in the Wedge sleeve dies a real death under Angelfire with the Elder in his stack. Poe’s last act backed up a copy of him, so the character is not quite gone; season 3 was to ask whose body that stack would wear.
  • Kovacs Prime, in a sleeve matching his birth sleeve, survives as the only Kovacs on record and, Schapker said, would have stayed embedded in the Protectorate.
  • Quell survives and leaves Harlan’s World; Schapker’s plan was for her to restart the uprising on another planet.
  • Poe is rebooted with no memories; Dig 301, now Annabel, runs the Nevermore. Trepp keeps her family and her father’s workshop; her father Lucas and brother Anil are dead.
  • Dead: the Founders Axley, Anton Durov, Haruki Okada, Tanaseda Hideki, Dugan and Konrad Harlan; Yukito, Kemp, Semetaire, Danica Harlan, and Jaeger in Carrera’s sleeve. Reileen died in season 1; her recordings are all that is left of her here.
  • Netflix’s last Altered Carbon release, the anime film Resleeved (19 March 2020), is an original prequel set on the planet Latimer.

Notes

  • Titles. As in season 1, the episode titles are borrowed from classic films, here all American and from 1932–47 — Phantom Lady, Payment Deferred, Nightmare Alley, Shadow of a Doubt, I Wake Up Screaming — but the finale takes the title of Morgan’s second novel.
  • Why a new Kovacs. In-world he simply wears a new sleeve, given by Axley; the showrunner gave Mackie a Kovacs at a different point in his life, with more at stake. Critics compared the device to Doctor Who’s regenerations. Will Yun Lee, the original-sleeve Kovacs of season 1’s flashbacks, returns as Prime, so two Kovacs share the screen.
  • The Nevermore. The glitching Poe rebuilds Tanaseda’s old safe house in his own image, but wrong: “It’s as if the Raven collapsed in on itself, so it becomes the Nevermore,” Schapker said. Under Annabel it is repaired and brighter by the coda.
  • Design. Carey Meyer, production designer on both seasons, built the world around one core: the Needlecast tower and the streets leading off it. Much of the season is set in caves and forests, under the season’s signature blue — the Angels’ beams, Angelfire and the Songspire’s glowing roots.
  • Reception. Most critics found it tighter, more focused and more personal than season 1, and liked Mackie, Poe’s story and larger roles for its women; detractors missed Bay City’s neon and found the plot convoluted and the villains flat. Rotten Tomatoes: 81 per cent of 36 critics; Metacritic: 65 from 8.
  • The author’s view. Morgan was a consultant on the show and every episode credits his novel. In April 2020 he told Inverse that it was “ludicrous” to rank Mackie below Kinnaman, but that season 2 goes well off the line of the second novel: “Kovacs in the show is moving consistently away from Kovacs in the books.” The Elder’s design, he said, was more or less what he would have done.
← Season 1Resleeved →