‘Raised by Wolves’ is a large-scale sci-fi adventure packed with horror, violence, gore and a complex plot with enough novel ideas that already in its first season made it practically impossible to know which direction it was heading. The premiere of the second season on HBO Max shows that his approach is not limited to going around the same, for better and for worse.
In the first season finale Mother and Father, Amanda Collin and Abubakar Salim, attempted to sacrifice themselves in the core of the planet because Mother had accidentally given birth to a giant flying eel that could have been written into their programming as a virus, (if we imagine the android as a kind of 3D printer) alreadyNow they find themselves in a new setting together with their brood of six human children.a newly formed atheist colony in Kepler’s mysterious tropical zone 22 b.
But this new society is threatened by that “natural son” of Mother, who has the ability to drive what little remains of the human race to extinction. The true nature of what they call “Number 7” is kept secret by the androids also from Sue (Niamh Algar), who is part of that base nicknamed “The Collective”, presided over by an artificial intelligence called “The Trust”. This approach allows last season’s unconventional family dynamic is set in a larger social context.
The lingering effects of war, mistrust of androids, and general dislike of Mithraic adherence to the Sun deity, trap everyone within intersecting philosophical lines, but we continue with many enigmas about the atheist sect, or why Kepler-22b is so important. Meanwhile, Sue’s husband, Marcus (Travis Fimmel), has renamed himself an evangelist of the Sun, and is recruiting a gang of converted terrorists to harass the Collective, his likely ally could turn out to be Paul (Felix Jamieson).
Already in season 1 it was established that something is communicating with Paul, who begins to see himself as the prophet of Sol and is entrusting his allegiance to this higher power far ahead of his “parents”, be it Sue or Mother , Parent or the Collective. Meanwhile, we see how androids are becoming more and more human, with small weaknesses and anxieties and while some of the human characters are becoming skeptical they seem to be becoming more and more synthetic.
The serpent of paradise and the original sin
The new setting allows for a larger framework for the dysfunctional nuclear family and the particular holy war that takes place, reversing some of the dynamics it previously established, challenging the role of androids and their relationship with humans and the moral dilemmas they put on the spot. to artificial intelligence, such as doubts about what to do with Number 7, when the monster begins to terrorize the colony and the colonists decide to hunt him down, with the Mother herself in the lead, although she is obviously not willing to simply shoot her own offspring to death.
All the themes and plot of the series start to coalesce into various interesting emotional and philosophical contexts and ‘Raised by Wolves’ continues to double down on the stakes and shows little laziness when it comes to posing wild turns, a mythology in constant evolution and the interpersonal drama with more characters, threats and world building. Season 2, gets into a more difficult garden than it already was and this leaves its mark on the narrative neatness of these first episodes, which lose some of the absorbing urgency of the first installment.
Ridley Scott’s iron direction is missed in the first episodes and the simplicity of a survival reduced to minimum power. There is no lack of religious references, a trademark of the house, such as that snake in paradise, nor the scenes of terror, and already at the beginning of episode 1 there is a tribute to ‘The Thing’ that does not lose the perspective of its mix of genres. Those who enjoyed the first season will continue to find the oddities of ‘Raised By Wolves’ appealing, you can tell she hasn’t ducked her tail to expand her fan base, and is more than happy to see herself as the grotesque, ultra-violent version of ‘Foundation’. And maybe that will be enough.