“Altered Carbon” Heading Back to Netflix for Season 2
Altered Carbon, Netflix’s mega-expensive, time-spanning sci-fi story of endlessly-reborn detective Takeshi Kovacs, has been green lit for a second season.
Via multiple industry reports, Netflix has ordered eight all-new episodes (down from the first season’s run of 10 episodes, which debuted all at once in February) for the series, which is based on Richard K. Morgan’s line of dystopian cyberpunk novels.
Bound by Altered Carbon’s lore, in which Kovacs’ consciousness is eternally transplanted into a succession of new bodies, or “sleeves,” via downloadable technology that fits everything into portable storage plug-ins known as “stacks,” original Kovacs actor Joel Kinnaman won’t be returning to reprise the role for Season 2.
Rather, Kovacs will be played by Anthony Mackie, a face that’s familiar to Marvel fans for his multiple appearances as The Falcon in a string of MCU films: Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Ant-Man, Captain America: Civil War, and this year’s Avengers: Infinity War.
Additional casting details are light, but Season 1 showrunner and executive producer Laeta Kalogridis will be back, joined by Alison Schapker, who will share both duties with Kalogridis and other executive producers for the series’ second outing.
Beyond casting Mackie as the new Takeshi Kovacs, it’s not known whether other Season 1 stars like Dichen Lachman (who played Kovacs’ deliciously twisted sister, Reileen) and Martha Higareda (the detective who first suspects, and then romances Kovacs) will be back. Kalogridis told Entertainment Weekly in February that Lachman and Chris Conner (Poe, the endearing AI manager of the Raven Hotel) might turn up in Season 2.
Also mysterious is the time and setting for Kovacs’ re-sleeved Season 2 adventures. Morgan’s second book in the Carbon series, Broken Angels, takes place 30 years after the events of the original, but Netflix has not indicated whether the show’s second season will adhere to the novels’ sequencing. We also haven’t seen word of a possible release date, but that’s to be expected this early in the development cycle. In the meantime, you can catch up by checking out the entire first season of Altered Carbon at Netflix.
