Raised by Wolves Season 2 (Mini-Review)

Raised by Wolves Season 2 picks up shortly after the first season ended. After crashing in the Tropical Zone, Mother must deal with Number 7. But her fight against her serpent son is made harder by the colony of atheists and revelations about her child. Marcus continues to follow "Sol" and tries to regain his power. Who is Sol? What does the entity want? With every answer there are even more questions. Raised by Wolves Season 2 was released on HBO Max in 2022.

Raised by Wolves is an extremely odd show. I can't really describe what makes it really odd, but you may need a few episodes for it to feel normal. I know it took me a few episodes into Season 2 to start to remember why I liked it in the first place. There are some shows where you need to stick with it to enjoy it and this show is a good example.

The finale for this season is really abrupt. Both me and revrezner commented on it the moment the credits started. It did make sense as a finale since Mother's fight with Number 7 is resolved while setting up a new threat for next season. Well...threats but I count Marcus as the same threat with some new toys hinted at.

Faith is, again, at the heart of this show. The Atheists are supposed to not believe in any deity but that turns out not to be the case. While they don't worship Sol, there are things that replace him. In real life people that are atheists can hold up ideals that are akin to worship. In the beginning of the season the Collective, an AI, is a god-like figure to the atheists. It is the AI that determines how society should live. This shows that Atheists and Mithraic believers aren't all that different from one another.

This season contains one of the best action sequences of the series. Vrille is an android made to imitate a girl of the same name. She has to do this because her owner is the real Vrille's mother. This makes her an extremely tragic character since at her core she's torn between pretending to be someone while wondering about the person she actually is. She's put in great danger as her owner follows the android-hating Marcus. After something really messed up happens she is able to exact her revenge on most of his followers. That scene is just...just awesome.

It turns out that "Sol" is actually an entity able to manipulate certain people to its will. Is it good? Bad? Or something else entirely? It could be that it lies outside of a black and white moral spectrum. This makes me think of the show as Lovecraftian/Cosmic horror as Sol is just too inhuman to understand. I want to understand its motives more but can understand if its intentions are always just out of reach. Maybe the truth is that the questions are much more interesting than the answers.

I would highly recommend Raised by Wolves Season 2 to those who liked the first season. I would also highly recommend Raised by Wolves Season 2 to science fiction fans.