After a rough start, TNTs Snow Piercer eventually found its basis the progression of its first season. Years of post-apocalyptic simmering class conflict between the titular train cars exploded in its climax, pave the way for a second season that seeks to explore those conflicts beyond the bounds of the source material.
In the course of Snow Piercer‘s debut season, things came to several heads after lower class passenger uprising directed by Andre Layton (Daveed Diggs); the result was that everyone learned it the truth about Snowpiercer’s mysterious, arcane conductor, Mr. Wilford, played by Game of ThronesSean bean. Wilford’s actions in the first season-not to mention Snowpiercer’s head of hospitality Melanie (Jennifer Connelly) –gave the show’s sizable cast plenty to chew as their characters all tried to make sense of what would become of their future, now that Snowpiercer’s passengers had almost given up on maintaining their strange society.
But in the last moments of the first season, and that’s exactly where the second season begins, Snow Piercer indicated it was about to stray even further from the tracks of the source material, as everyone on Snowpiercer found that their train wasn’t the only one still going through the never-ending ice and snow.
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Such as Snow PiercerThe second season opens, there are still plenty of people who want the head of Melanie (Jennifer Connelly), as well as the heads of the rest of the hospitality staff, on spikes for their years of brutal submission and deceit. But almost everyone’s focus in season two early episodes – four of which were submitted for review beforehand – is on Big Alice, another monstrous train from Wilford’s creation that held itself on Snowpiercer with the threat of bringing the locomotive to a stop.
In the same way that the sudden realization that Wilford might actually be dead or never boarded the train, Snowpiercer’s passengers staggered, learning that he is still very much alive on board Big Alice fills some of them, such as hospitality manager Ruth Wardell (Alisson Wright) teenage sociopath LJ (Annalize Basso), with a careful but nevertheless delusional hope their savior has arrived. But others on the train, Like it Layton, Sam Roche (Mike O’Malley) and Bess Till (Mickey Sumner) know that Big Alice and its inhabitants are a threat, if only because Melanie was so persistent in keeping them away from Wilford.
Under this tension Snow PiercerSeason 2 tries to weave a dark narrative rhyme as it introduces us back to Melanie, which is quite in the opening moments of the season Outside of the two trains, dressed in a special suit that can only protect her from the deadly frost. Unlike everyone on Snowpiercer who doesn’t have a good idea of what Wilford’s arrival means, Melanie is the character who is doing, and there is a feverish passion for the work she does collecting snow and tinkering with the trains before finding herself being dragged back on board to see what Wilford’s arrival on the scene really means.
At the same time as Melanie sets foot on Big Alice for what may just be the first time ever, Snow Piercer introduces us to Melanie’s tall onelost daughter Alex (A wrinkle in timeRowan Blanchard), who boarded the train as Wilford’s envoy with a list of requirements that must be met if Big Alice were to kill Snowpiercer’s power source. In Alex you see shades of her mother’s calculating eye, as well get a sense of what kind of negative influence Wilford was during her education on board Big Alice.
The tenuous peace and belief in an emerging democracy that Snowpiercer’s passengers established in season one is being tested slightly differently this season as Snowpiercer and Big Alice’s fates interact figuratively and literally in different ways. be connected.. When Bean’s Wilford finally makes his way onto the screen, he does so with an air of undeniable darkness that immediately marks him as this season’s villain. But what’s somewhat curious about Bean’s presence as Wilford is how the character’s actions sometimes undercut the gravity he’s supposed to be carrying.
When we meet other new characters –like Big Alice’s head, Kevin (Tom Lipinski), and a man known only as “Icy Bob” (Andre Tricoteux) –they all help to create this idea from Wilford and Big Alice invincible forces of evil that everyone on Snowpiercer should fear. But in scenes like the moment when Wilford finally comes face to face with Melanie, there is something that almost feels to especially stupid about these numbers as compared to the image and reputation Snow Piercer tried to project last season. This is still a show about people surviving a winter apocalypse by bundling together on trains and beyond Snow Piercer has dedicated its first season to exploring what end-time revolution could look like, it feels like some kind of slowing down step back from turning away from it into a typically sinister Big Bad character, doing Big Bad things like ominous speeches to popular music.
Or that first threat The arrival of Big Alice signals coming home in later episodes of season two, of course, remains to be seen. And despite Part of the disappointment with Wilford himself, there are some interesting ideas at work Snow Piercerseason two that have the potential to continue this next leg of the journey. For a start, though, it’s a season that stays on track and holds the pace rather than doing something truly new with the world. But in tricky weather, like a frozen apocalypse navigated by nightmare trains, accidents happen all the time – so who knows what the future holds?
Snow Piercer returns to TNT today, January 25.
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