After streaming the second season of Netflix’s Altered Carbon, and it’s animated spin-off Altered Carbon: Resleeved, directly to my cortical stack here are a few of the things I particularly enjoy about the show that I’d like Netflix to consider for future seasons.
Note: This article contains very mild spoilers for Season 2.
1. More Mackie
Downloading human minds into new bodies, or sleeves, is a core conceit of the show allowing the show-runners to cast a different face each season but we’d like to see Takeshi Kovacs’ current sleeve, in the form of Anthony Mackie, pop up again. Joel Kinnaman may have launched the series with his chiselled face but he never quite fit with the world the show was creating. Kinnaman’s Kovacs came off far too harsh, too much like a stereotypical, hard-boiled detective, which didn’t quite fit the show’s cyberpunk setting. He never really gelled with the “younger” version of Kovacs portrayed by Will Yun Lee either. Mackie provided a much more likeable performance without losing the “edge” necessary for “The Last Envoy”.
Season 2 also saw our wish from season 1 to see more of Will Yun Lee. as Kovacs’ original “birth sleeve”. Developments in Season 2 mean that seeing him again in future season isn’t off the cards, so yes, more of that please!
2. New Sleeves
I know. I’m contradicting myself immediately, but, after ending up in a beefy detective’s sleeve in Season 1 and a heavily modified military sleeve (with some added canine gene-splicing) in Season 2, I’d be interested in seeing Kovacs end up in totally different types of sleeves in future seasons. Even in the animated Resleeved, (which takes place soon after Kovacs’ time with Falconer as shown in the flashback from Season 1), he ends up in another soldier’s sleeve.
As “The Last Envoy” he’s mentally prepared to adapt to whatever sleeve and situation he finds himself in, as quickly as possible. It’s been pretty helpful so far that he’s been put in physically imposing and/or modified military sleeves. How would his tactics change if he was in a “normal” human sleeve, with no enhancements? Even better, what if he was in a vastly under-powered sleeve? How would his tactics adapt? Until now Kovacs has had a tendency to waltz into trouble with a reasonable expectation he can fight his way out of it. What if that option was removed entirely? Stretch that envoy training to its fullest.
Which leads to my next point:
3. “I Am an Envoy, I Take What Is Offered”
In the books, “The Envoys” were created by the UN Protectorate as the ultimate enforcers and Kovacs worked for the “evil” Protectorate before being turned by Quellcrist Falconer (Renée Elise Goldsberry). In the series Falconer herself trained the envoys and we’ve primarily seen Kovacs use his envoy capabilities to quickly adapt to unfamiliar sleeves and gain the upper hand in combat. Less obvious ways we’ve seen Kovacs use his envoy talents include quickly building a support network and enlisting allies he can call upon in the pursuit of his mission. The connections he forms, like with the hotel A.I. Poe, do seem a little more genuine and less manipulative than in the books, but I’d like to see Kovacs really use his envoy skills of coercion and total absorption of detail to greater effect in the series.
How do you know if you could trust this man if he could be using every advantage of psychology and biology to subtly get what he wants from you?
That fact that Kovacs is semi famous in the show as “The Last Envoy” is also a bit of an albatross to leave around his neck. Sure it opens doors, but once someone knows, everyone knows. Developments in Season 2 mean that he has the opportunity to work more in the shadows in future, and I hope he takes it.
4. Days of Future Past
Altered Carbon does a nice job of side stepping one of the biggest pitfalls of most sci-fi shows – basing your future society around just one technology or societal leap forward. Plenty of sci-fi creators predicted mobile communications devices or something like the Internet, decades before their creation, but few imagined worlds that had both together, along with drone technology, genetic modification, dating apps, and whatever other nightmarish tech is the latest fad.
Altered Carbon doesn’t just feature the technology to store human minds but adds the ability to transmit them between bodies on different planets. Add in the (mostly discarded by humanity) Artificial Intelligences that turn up in both series and you have a very interesting milieu to play in. In the 300 years since Takeshi Kovacs first death, and the 40 years since his first rebirth, however, there doesn’t seem to have been too much new tech for him to adapt to.
I’d like some futurist to come on board the show and throw some really wild ideas into the mix. Maybe we could see some more heavily modified sleeves for Kovacs to adapt to. Maybe new sleeves could be modified to mitigate “Sleeve Shock”, removing one of Kovacs’ biggest advantages on the show. Give Kovacs (and the audience) some real future shocks!
5. Let The Past Die
Even with the 300 year gap between the death of Kovacs’ “birth sleeve” and his first rebirth in Season 1, he still has a surprising number of past connections turn up in both seasons. Whether it’s the originals, or virtual ghosts meant to torture him, Season 2 seems to close the door on most, if not all, of these. So now that the table has been set, Netflix should feast on the storytelling opportunities that come with dropping Kovacs into entirely new worlds and companions. Sure, keep the Quellcrist Falconer story-line running through the series, but don’t make it the focal point. Make Kovacs’ building networks of allies to take down powerful enemies the focus. An avenging (broken) angel if you will.
