The second season of HBO’s new original sci-fi series, Raised by Wolves is coming in February.
The first teaser for S2 of Raised by Wolves is here, and our feelings are mixed. On the one hand, once again, the visuals are amazing and we’re thrilled that the strikingly androgynous Danish actress Amanda Collin is returning to star as Mother. Her extraordinary performance anchored the first season’s narrative arc and spooky, other-worldly vibe, and that same moody, disquieting viibe is present in the teaser. On the other hand, we were seriously disappointed in the S1 finale, which has shaken our confidence that S2 will rebound from that fiasco to become the genuinely original and visionary series it initially had promised to be.
(Major spoilers for the S1 finale below.)
The series was created by Aaron Guzikowski, with Ridley Scott serving as executive producer and directing the first two episodes. As I’ve written previously, the story involves two androids serving as Mother (Amanda Collin) and Father (Abubakar Salim) figures on a strange virgin planet, Kepler 22b (an actual observed extrasolar planet), after Earth has been destroyed by the outbreak of a religious war. They are programmed to incubate, birth, and raise human children to rebuild the population and set up an atheist civilization to keep the human race from going extinct. It’s a harsh, dangerous environment, even for androids, and only one of their original six children survived: Campion (Winta McGrath).
Then the remnants of an extreme religious sect from Earth, the Mithraic, who worship Sol, found their way to the same planet aboard a spaceship, or ark, called Heaven. The reconnaissance team tried to abduct Campion and kill Mother.
That’s when we discovered that Mother has special abilities: she’s actually a reprogrammed weaponized android called The Necromancer, who once slaughtered atheists back on Earth. Her deadly sonic screams—which can disintegrate humans in seconds—were turned on the Mithraic, and she crashed their ark onto the planet. Her new maternal instincts led her to bring the surviving Mithraic children into her fold.
That did not go over well with the few surviving Mithraic, especially Marcus (Travis Fimmel) and his partner, Sue (Niamh Algar). They were determined to rescue their (technically adopted) son Paul (Felix Jamieson) from Mother and Father, against the orders of the Mithraic leader, Ambrose (Awissi Lakou). The various conflicts inevitably escalated, and the planet itself has its own mysterious secrets and hidden dangers, with the fate of the human race ultimately lying in the balance.
YouTube/HBO Max
Some viewers found the pacing of Raised by Wolves S1 to be too slow, but I genuinely found it atmospheric and weird in interesting ways—until the finale. Mother became pregnant after having virtual sex with her VR creator, “downloading” the required information. Except instead of giving birth to a baby as she’d hoped, Mother literally vomited up a creepy snake with suckers that—I kid you not—can fly with no obvious means of generating lift. In my review, I called it “a jarring, over-the-top ploy that simply wasn’t sufficient payoff for the viewer, and clashed mightily with the original set-up.”
Apparently the flying alien sucker snake (FASS)—which had rapidly grown to an alarming size in the final scene— is going to be a major part of the overall narrative arc for S2. This was not welcome news, especially since the ultimate fates of Mother and Father remained ambiguous. Fortunately, this teaser confirms that the pair will be back in full force for the second season, and there’s barely a hint of the FASS to be seen, apart from a brief glimpse of a snake figure painted on a rock.
YouTube/HBO Max
It’s not clear what’s happening in terms of plot, but the teaser opens with a shot of a badly injured Mother. “Androids can change, just like human beings,” her voice tells us. Father also has survived, along with the children and Sue. Marcus appears to be devolving into the strange creatures Mother and Father first encountered on the alien planet, and he hasn’t become any less zealous and violent. He’s still got some minion survivors to boss around, and he’s still intent on “bringing purity to this planet.”
Something violent seems to be reawakening in Mother as well, although her primary purpose is still to keep her children safe and find them a new home. The teaser ends ominously. “Perhaps we are becoming too human,” Mother muses, covered in what might just be blood. Will she re-appear in her full Necromancer glory? That would be a sight to see.
The second season of Raised by Wolves will premiere on February 3, 2022, on HBO Max.
Listing image by YouTube/HBO Max
