Snowpiercer Season 2 review: Sean Bean’s familiar threat



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Sean Bean as Joseph Wilford.

Sean Bean as Joseph Wilford.
Screenshot: TNT

After having made a difficult start, TNT Snowpiercer has finally found its place the progression of its first season. Years of simmering post-apocalyptic class conflict between the titular train cars burst in its peak, set the stage for a second season that wants to try and explore these conflicts beyond the limits of its source material.

During Snowpiercerthe first season of, things came to many heads after the lifting of lower class passengers directed by Andre Layton (Daveed Diggs); his result was that everyone has learned the truth about Snowpiercer’s mysterious and secret conductor, Mr. Wilford, interpreted by The iron Throne‘Sean Bean. Wilford’s actions in the first season –without forgetting those of Snowpiercer Head of Hospitality Melanie (Jennifer Connelly) –gave the show’s cast a lot to chew on, as their characters all tried to make sense of what was to become their future, now that the Snowpiercer passengers had all but given up on maintaining their strange society.

Illustration from the article titled iSnowpiecer / is Second Seasoni / iWelcome in a New, if Unsurprising Tyranny

But in the dying moments of the first season, that’s where the the second season resumes, Snowpiercer reported that he was about to deviate even further from the source material’s tracks, as everyone on Snowpiercer learned that their train wasn’t the only one crossing the ever-put an end to ice and snow.

As SnowpiercerThe second season opens, there are still a lot of people who want the head of Melanie (Jennifer Connelly), as well as the heads of the rest of the reception staff, on sstings for their years of brutal subjugation and deception. But most people’s attention in season two the first episodes – four of which were provided in advance for review – is on Big Alice, another monstrous train from Wilford’s creation that clung to Snowpiercer with the threat of stopping the locomotive.

In the same way that the sudden realization that Wilford might in fact be dead or never boarded the train shook Snowpiercer passengers, learning that he is alive and well aboard Big Alice fills some, such as hotel manager Ruth Wardell (Alisson Wright) and adolescent sociopath LJ (Annalizes Basso), with a careful but nevertheless delusional hope their savior has arrived. But others on the train, as Layton, Sam Roche (Mike O’Malley) and Bess Till (Mickey Sumner) know how to view Big Alice and its inhabitants as a threat, if only because Melanie insisted on keeping them away from Wilford.

Among this tension SnowpiercerThe second season of attempts to weave a dark narrative rhyme as he reintroduces us to Mélanie, which is rather found in the first moments of the season outside of the two trains, dressed in a special costume that can only do much to protect her from the deadly frost. Unlike everyone on Snowpiercer who doesn’t have a solid idea of ​​what Wilford’s arrival means, Melanie is the only character who Is, and there’s a feverish passion for the work she does picking up snow and tinkering with trains before finding herself brought back on board to deal with what Wilford’s arrival at the scene really means.

Melanie and Layton shake hands.

Melanie and Layton shake hands.
Screenshot: TNT

As Melanie sets foot on Big Alice for what might be the very first time, Snowpiercer presents us along-lost girl Alex (A wrinkle in timeRowan Blanchard), who boards the train as Wilford’s envoy with a list of demands that must be met under threat of Big Alice killing Snowpiercer’s power source. In Alex, you can see the undertones of his mother’s calculating eye, but also get a sense of what kind of negative influence Wilford was during his education aboard Big Alice.

The tenuous peace and faith in a nascent democracy that the Snowpiercer passengers established in season one is something else increasingly tested this season, as the destinies of Snowpiercer and Big Alice are interconnected at figurative and literal meaning. When Bean’s Wilford makes his way onto the screen, he does so with an unmistakable air of obscurity 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 undermine the gravity he’s supposed to carry.

When we meet other new characters –as Big Alice’s hospitality leader Kevin (Tom Lipinski), and a man known only as “Icy Bob” (André Tricoteux) –they all help to create this idea of ​​Wilford and Big Alice like indomitable forces of evil that everyone on Snowpiercer would do well to fear. But in scenes like the moment Wilford finally comes face to face with Melanie, there is something that almost feels too silly of those numbers, especially compared to image and reputation Snowpiercer spent the last season trying to project. It’s still a show about people surviving a winter apocalypse by regrouping on trains and after the ride. Snowpiercer has committed its first season to examining what the End Times Revolution might look like, it feels like something from a decelerating step backwards from that to a Typically sinister figure from Big Bad, who does great things like giving ominous speeches to popular music.

That this initial threat The arrival of Big Alice signals comes home to roost in the final episodes of season two remains to be seen, of course. And despite part of the disappointment with Wilford himself, there are some interesting ideas at work in Snowpiercerthe second season which has the potential to make this next leg of the journey worth watching. For starters, though, it’s a season that stays the course and keeps the pace rather than doing something really new with its world. But in difficult weather situations like an icy apocalypse traveled by nightmare trains, accidents happen all the time – so who knows what the future holds?

Snowpiercer returns to TNT today, January 25.


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