Both shows' second seasons take a similar approach to the multiverse.
There are two ways you may handle suddenly rule yourself traveling back in time : either freak out and essay to run away back to your own present tense , whenever that may be , or unstrain and just pluck with the experience . If you ’re being shunted back and off between past tense , present , and future tense , there ’s got ta be a reason why . It ’s some co-occurrence , then , that bothRussian Doll , Netflix ’s grotesque metre locomotion enigma box that immobilize Natasha Lyonne inside the night of her birthday and force her to reiterate it every time she dies , andUndone , Amazon Prime ’s rotoscoped sci - fi that star Rosa Salazar as an existentially bored twentysomething who tries to use her newfound clock time travel business leader to get her Father-God back to life , are back within a week of each other for their 2nd seasons , each expand in like ways on the supernatural pathways lay down by their first .
The second time of year ofRussian Dollditches theGroundhog Daypremise altogether in party favor of sending Lyonne ’s Nadia Vulvokov , via an ancient subway car , back in time to lick the closed book of her kin ’s lost heritage , thought to have been frivol away off by her addled mother ( play byChloë Sevigny ) . As she cut into deeply into the truth , she go further back in time , to New York City in the ' 80 and Budapest in the ' 40s , fit long - suffer relatives from generations ago as she unravels the story . The spin : while back in clock time , Nadia ’s cognisance lives inside the body of these women , all consecrate with Nadia ’s trademark red tresses , as she sham tobecomethem in decree to prevent a fellowship tragedy from ever occur .
Like the first time of year , it ’s apt and riveting , though , with the story thus expanded , you miss small bits that made the first time of year work as well as it did , like Nadia ’s job as a TV plot designer give her the integral ability to make sense of her constant " respawning . " You get the sentiency that there ’s so much here , face with such ebullience , that the true center of the narrative is lost in the joys of geographic expedition . Nadia spends barely any meter reconnecting with her female parent and her surrogate parent Ruth ( played by Elizabeth Ashley in the present and Annie Murphy in the yesteryear ) before leaving them behind a few episodes later on . A B - plot focus aroundCharlie Barnett’scharacter Alan traveling back in time inside the body of his gran living in East Berlin bewilderingly falls aside at the seams . Still , Nadia ’s arc wherein she forms a deep savvy of the inside working of her family ’s past that she could n’t have gotten while exist with her manic and schizoid mother is an intensely powerful news report unto itself , and — quotation to the writers — doesn’t palpate flip-flop - on .
Image by Chineme Elobuike for Thrillist / Photos by Amazon Prime and Netflix
In an spookily similar turn of issue , UndoneSeason 2 is also occupied with dig deeper into the concept of generational hurt and ethnic remembering . Where , in Season 1 , Alma Winograd - Diaz ( Salazar ) confronts and explores her mestiza inheritance by traveling back through time to communicate with her aboriginal Mexican ancestors , mix the science fabrication of clock time locomotion with aboriginal spirituality , in Season 2 we read about her father ’s side of the family , specifically his female parent ’s escape from the Polish pogrom on the eventide of World War II and how her know during her journeying to America dictated the rest period of her animation . clean up right where Season 1 exit off , Alma is transported to an alternate dimension , along with the ghost of her father , as both have the consistence of themselves in the Modern reality as they work together to resolve a mystery surrounding an enormous secret Alma ’s mother has been keeping from them , and how her secret is linked to her female parent - in - practice of law ’s tragic past .
As in the first season , UndoneSeason 2 seamlessly blends emotion with heightened sci - fi , and the rotoscoped animation allows for more far - off and fantastical configurations . At one point , Alma ’s grandmother ’s memories are shown as endlessly folding Escher stairs floating in a sea of clouds , the flatten vivification giving the whole thing a tonally remote , dreamlike quality . LikeRussian Doll , the new pathways of the write up run to be more confusing than not , asUndoneis similarly more interested in exploring all the possibilities a raw time of year opens than in keeping a tight focus on just one of them . Alma ’s sis Becca ( Angelique Cabral ) is the one with powers now , able to transmit the two of them into the memories of their mother and father ; a plotline follow their grandmother ’s escape from eastern Europe is crammed into three episode ; and there seems to be less regard overall for stick any form of rules introduced in the first time of year . It also terminate on a dubiousness grade that all but foretell that there will be more to the story .
It should be noted that both of these shows would have been complete as the miniseries they originally were , as both stop on near - stark grace notes that leave just enough open space for the audience to interpret the way they need . Russian DollandUndonehad no job having second seasons in the first place , though I do n’t necessarily envy them for descend back at all . TV has , after all , become a proving ground where shows are called " limited series " until they profit enough traction to produce beyond their original boundary .
Netflix
But both shows innovate tale theory and original characters that their respective audience latched onto immediately . Both Lyonne and Salazar have similar , charmingly rubicund attitudes to their intact population being turned inside - out by forces beyond their ascendancy , and both find ways to gift the mundane and the everyday in ways that are visually and emotionally exciting . Both shows also use meter travel in ways that feel spookily similar , especially give how nigh together the new season have debuted .
There are three types of metre locomotion story : the stories in which you ca n’t shift the past times at all , and , in fact , anything you do to prevent something only causes that affair to take place ; the stories in which you’re able to change the yesteryear , and , in doing so , you vary the future as well ; and the write up in which changing the past tense create an alternate reality , allow both result to live at the same time . Russian DollSeason 2 masquerades as the 2nd while , in the final episode , proving that it was the first all along , andUndoneSeason 2 explores the possibilities of the third before also eventually acquiescing to the logical power of the first .
Not even the ability to bend the macrocosm to your will can keep the past times from bewitch up with the nowadays , as Nadia learns in her second time of year ’s metaphysically terrifying sexual climax . Not even finding another universe in which her father was live and her family was happy could disorder Alma from the slip suspiciousness that all was not as it ’s supposed to be . You could chalk it all up to the ineffability of fate , the hamster steering wheel we endure indoors until our meter in this world is over , every detail of our biography laid out before us and impossible to escape . On the other hand , last with and learning from the sinning of the past tense is also a choice , one that even those with superhuman abilities have to learn to make .
Amazon Prime
