The return of ‘Raised by Wolves’ is a gift for fans of the craziest and most insane science fiction

The second season of ‘Raised by Wolves’, just released on HBO Max with two initial episodes, it takes a turn in its absolutely logical argument. In this season, and especially after an apocalyptic season finale which was not to everyone’s taste -but which was almost a pièce de résistance to distinguish the purebred fans from the upstarts-, could not continue with the interesting initial stage of raising Mother’s “children”. The Serie exhausted all possible conflicts of that phase when the two small warring factions on the planet clashed.

However, and although ‘Raised by Wolves’ goes into narrative paths a little more channeled into the norm thanks to a change of scenery, it is still unique and looks exclusively like itself. Everyone the elements that made it one of the most interesting and unclassifiable genre series of 2020 They are back now, after the inevitable pandemic pause, retaining all their virtues.

It’s a bit complicated to summarize the plot of the series if you don’t know the first season, but let’s say that the series tells the bloody and irreconcilable conflict between two sides of humans: the mithraics, worshipers of the sun god, and the atheists, humanists and, at the same time, very violent. Two robots, Father and Mother, flee Earth sent by a repentant Mithraic scientist, programmed to raise a group of children and reform the human species, and Mother – once a Mithraic weapon of mass destruction – finds new meaning in her life. Program.

After various disbandments that reconfigure the two sides that face each other on the planet (and that replicate the conflict on Earth on a scale), this season starts with Mother, Father and the children ending up in an atheist colony, El Colectivo, ruled by an artificial intelligence, La Confianza. Suspicion arises from the beginning, due to the children’s past as mithraics and that of Mother as a lethal weapon, now reprogrammed. And that is only the beginning of the problems.

More of the same… being unique

‘Raised by Wolves’ continues to play on constant surprise and bewilderment, and also on launch messages and icons that can be delved into in search of meanings and clues to the story, but obviously, it is not necessary to know in depth to enjoy the series. For example, the meaning of the genuine mystery religion of the Mithraics and their devotion to the god Sol Invictus has a deep historical root… which gives certain clues about the existence of that god, which does not seem to be a human invention, nor not even a divinity.

At its best, ‘Raised by Wolves’ runs in a bewildering aesthetic no man’s land. Although it still has curious reminiscences of ‘Prometheus’ in particular and of very specific elements of the ‘Alien’ saga in particular, the series is not like anything (although it is fun to find parallels with a kind of dirty version of ‘Foundation’), and in the cross between emotional drama, science-fiction of abstract concepts and horror films with flashes of Nueva Carne it is where he finds his identity.

It is early to know what thematic paths this season will take, especially with the meandering Son Number 7, whose birth we witnessed at the end of the previous season, threatening the colony. Many questions remain to be resolved (among the biggest, why is this planet so important and what exactly is the Sun), but it is very possible that even this season we will not see them resolved. It only remains to hope that the broadening of the focus does not take the edge off the story: from a strange family without parents plus two traumatized substitutes, to an entire atheist colony.

At the moment, there are wickers for a memorable season: monsters, a Mother who becomes the executing arm of the designs of La Confianza (with an aesthetic that makes it seem like something out of a German eighties gore Z series) and a budding terrorist group with an unexpected leader at the helm. They are just the first bars of one of the series to go to when it seems that all television science fiction is cut from the same pattern.