Season 2 Cast Announced for Altered Carbon

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While Altered Carbon still has no official release date, Netflix has released a teaser video to announce the main season 2 cast. As previously announced, Anthony Mackie replaces Joel Kinnaman as the main character, mercenary for hire Takeshi Kovacs. As expected, most of the season 1 cast is missing from the list, but 2 fan favorites are returning. And Simone Missick, a fan favorite from the now defunct Netflix Marvel universe, joins the cast.

Here is the teaser video, with Netflix’s character descriptions and my comments to follow.

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Altered Carbon Season 2: Production Begins & Other News

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Time for an update on Netflix’s cyberpunk bodyswapping series Altered Carbon, which got off to a slow start, but, according to Google Trends, ended up being the 2nd most searched for TV show title of 2018. Netflix has been slow in releasing news about season 2, with little known so far about the plot or returning cast, but, finally, tidbits of information are starting to appear.

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Netflix’s Transfers: Season 1 Review

*This is a review of Season 1. Recaps of individual episodes can be found HERE and on the Home Page as they are published.*

Transfers (or Transferts) is a 6 episode science fiction-thriller series, produced in France, which is now streaming on Netflix. The series aired in France in November, 2017, after having won Best French Series and Best Actor (for star Arieh Worthalter) at the 2017 SĂ©ries Mania Festival, an international festival. Transfers was created and written by Patrick Benedek and Claude Scasso.

Transfers takes place in the near future in a generic French city. Florian Bassot, a woodworker and family man, drowns while boating with his wife and children. He wakes up after having been in a coma for 5 years, and finds himself in another man’s body. While he was asleep, body swapping technology was developed, legalized, and then made illegal again two years later.

His wife, Sophie, never gave up on Florian, and arranged to have his mind transferred into the body of Sylvain Bernard, a brutal member of the anti-transfer police force, known as the BATI. Sylvain was shot in the shoulder, but died during surgery from a reaction to the anesthetic. Even though transfers are illegal, Sophie’s uncle, Dr Vautier, is a major researcher in the field, so he was able to secretly help her and Florian.

There is a thriving black market in illegal transfers and the kidnapping of young healthy people for their bodies has become a crime wave. An anti-transfer offshoot of the Catholic church has grown up around a young, charismatic priest named Father Luc, who believes that transfers are doomed by God. Father Luc uses technology to his benefit in slightly unscrupulous ways, and has an order of fanatical bald nuns who follow him. Father Luc also has a wealthy patron, Dangeac, who has supported his work from the beginning.

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Netflix’s Altered Carbon Renewed for Season 2: Anthony Mackie Takes Over as Takeshi Kovacs

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buzzfuss / 123RF Stock Photo

Netflix has given us some great news to start the weekend! They’ve finally officially announced the season 2 renewal of their neo noir sci fi thriller Altered Carbon. It seems they were waiting to make the announcement until they could also announce who the new co-showrunner and star would be.

Anthony Mackie, who’s most well-known for playing the Falcon/Sam Wilson in the MCU Captain America and Avengers films, will play the new sleeve of former Envoy and Protectorate soldier Takeshi Kovacs. Mackie has been in numerous other films, notably the critically acclaimed The Hurt Locker. His only other major foray into television was the 2016 HBO film All the Way, in which Mackie played Martin Luther King, Jr opposite Bryan Cranston’s Lyndon Johnson. That film was also well received.

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Altered Carbon Season 1 Episode 10: The Killers Recap

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It’s time for Tak and Rei to work out their sibling rivalry issues. In episode 9, Tak got Rei to confess to driving Laurens to temporary suicide, which solved the bulk of the season’s mysteries. But there are still a few new revelations in this episode, along with the big, season-ending battle between the good guys and the bad guys, which everyone takes part in.

Kristin climbs the stairs to her brother’s apartment. She finds him lying dead on the floor, just as Leung left him. She reaches for her gun, but doesn’t have it, so she picks up a candlestick and follows the sounds of gunshots to the boys’ room. There she finds the boys both dead, laid out on the floor in a growing pool of their own blood, partially hidden behind a couch.

She drops the candlestick in shock and starts to panic, but then she hears her mother’s voice. She searches the house until she finds Alazne, who falls into her arms, bloody and dying. As Alazne is dropping to the floor, she warns Kristin, “He’s behind you!”

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Altered Carbon Season 1 Episode 9: Rage in Heaven Recap

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Episode 9 is a dark episode, arguably the darkest of the season. But we also hear the real solution to Bancroft’s mystery from the person who orchestrated his evening, so at least there’s closure amidst the real death, betrayal, and disturbing fetishes.

The episode begins with another brief fast forward, this time with two hands playing Rock, Paper, Scissors.

In the present time, Tak sits at Poe’s bar while Poe examine’s Tak’s pardon. Poe pronounces the pardon exceptionally thorough, which is a welcome surprise. Tak says he knows what really happened to Bancroft, but Poe doesn’t take the bait.

Poe’s feeling a little pissy about Tak putting the entire gang in danger and making Poe kill a fellow AI, in order to give Laurens a solution that was a lie. Tak notes that the dead AI was no great loss, and he wanted to turn Lizzie into a sex slave. Poe comments that no one is ever going to hurt his little girl again.

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Altered Carbon Season 1 Episode 8: Clash by Night Recap

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The elusive pardon.

Tak’s voiceover: “What we believe shapes who we are. Belief can bring us salvation or destruction. But when you believe a lie for too long, the truth doesn’t set you free. It tears you apart.”

This episode picks up where episode 7 left off. Tak is reeling from the discovery of what his sister has turned into, or possibly always was. He can’t take in the fact that Rei is confessing to killing Quell, the love of his life, and the rest of the Uprising rebels, who had become the family he never had. Even worse, he can’t accept that it was premeditated murder, done in cold blood with no remorse.

Tak: Quell and the Envoys were our family. How could you kill our family?

Rei: They were just soldiers. You and I, we’re family. Our lives will be better now.

Tak: When everyone I ever loved was taken away from me? Do you know what that did to me? What I became?

Rei: I tried to find you.

Tak: How hard did you look?

Rei: And then you got yourself caught by CTAC. They locked you up so tight no one could get to you.

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Altered Carbon Season 1 Episode 7: Nora Inu Recap

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In episode 7, present day Tak lies unconscious while Rei heals him. He spends the time reliving his memories of their shared past, so that his brain can try to fit this new development into place. Tak and the audience discover some missing puzzle pieces about present day mysteries as well. None of it is encouraging.

Tak’s voiceover: “The danger of living too many times is you forget to fear death. We dismiss the Grim Reaper as a quaint metaphor. But fearing death- it’s good for you.”

Young Rei sits on the floor in the Kovacs family kitchen on Harlan’s World. Her father tells her to take off her necklace, but she refuses because it was her mother’s. It’s a pendant in the shape of the infinity snake that matches the tattoos Rei and Tak will get on their forearms as adults.

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Altered Carbon Season 1 Episode 6: Man with My Face Recap

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In episode 6, Tak gets Kristin the treatment she needs for her wounds, and they continue their investigation, leading to a major confrontation with Dimi the Personality Fragged Twin. Vernon remembers how to be pretty good back up and a pretty good friend, though he’s an impatient dad. Lizzie makes some progress and reveals a new clue. Isaac is exonerated in the murder case, at least according to Tak’s Envoy intuition. We meet a new mysterious new character, Hemingway, and Tak’s sister Rei returns from the dead. Themes of family, protection and revenge run through the episode, culminating with Rei’s reveal.

The episode begins with a brief flash forward and a return of the Mad Mykola song. We see through Tak’s eyes, but his head is covered by a ragged black cloth. He looks down and sees his hands in cuffs and chains.

In the here and now, Tak and Kristin are being driven to the hospital, while Tak tries to keep Kristin alive. She’s bleeding profusely from her wounds. He keeps her talking so she doesn’t pass out. If her sleeve dies, he can put her in a new one, but her mother and the rest of her family, all devout Neo Cs, will never speak to her again.

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Altered Carbon Season 1 Episode 5: The Wrong Man Recap

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Kovacs: “When everyone lies, telling the truth isn’t just rebellion. It’s an act of revolution. So think carefully when you speak it, because the truth is a weapon.”

Tak and Kristin spend most of episode 5 dealing with the aftermath of Tak’s torture. She tells him the story of how her partner and boyfriend, Elias Ryker, ended up on ice. They find a way to spin up the stack from Dimi’s disembodied head. Poe gives them a tip that begins to pull more of the disparate strands of the separate cases together. They grow closer to each other as they work together and learn they can trust each other.

And Captain Tanaka brings on disaster, just like I knew he would.

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