Sugar Season 2 Ups The Ante With A Grittier Noir Mystery
Apple TV’s sci-fi noir pits Colin Farrell’s private eye against an all-powerful threat.
Apple TV specializes in shows that, at best, would be considered “high concept.” That can be rewarding for audiences looking for more meat on the bones of their shows — and given that most of these shows would be too narratively dense to survive on traditional networks, it’s a much-needed addition to the TV ecosystem. Apple’s smorgasbord of heady science fiction allows its creators to get well and truly weird. And it doesn’t get any weirder than Sugar, a Los Angeles-based noir that threw a bonkers sci-fi twist into its first season. It’s the kind of spoiler that the show is committed to preserving: even in the new trailer for Sugar Season 2, Colin Farrell’s titular detective demurs when he’s asked about his origins. Just know that he’s from very, very far away — it may or may not inform the latest case he gets embroiled in.
Sugar’s first season saddled its hero with a quintessential missing person’s case, one that established the show’s love for classic Hollywood drama and hard-boiled noir. Its second seems to be taking John Sugar in a darker direction, upping the ante with a much grittier conspiracy.
In Sugar Season 2, another intriguing missing persons case comes across Sugar’s desk. He’s tasked with finding the older brother (Ramond Lee) of a talented local boxer (Jin Ha). This mission is complicated by the fact that he doesn’t want to be found — and not just by Sugar. As he learns from his new right-hand woman, Val (Sasha Calle), his target is “on the run from some dangerous people.”
It doesn’t take long for Sugar to get on their radar, either. The threat of a dangerous gang pulls our hero way out of his comfort zone, but his investigation also faces an even bigger obstacle from Lieutenant Vega (Tony Dalton), a sheriff’s deputy who seems to know a lot more than he’s letting on. It all feeds into a city-wide conspiracy; according to the season synopsis, it will force Sugar to “reckon with himself to answer the question — how far will he go to do what’s right?”
Sugar is poised to deliver another byzantine mystery, but this strange conspiracy will only be the tip of the iceberg in Season 2. Farrell’s private eye also has his own baggage to deal with — part of it feeds into Sugar’s sci-fi twist, but the rest of it is personal, involving the search for a sister he hasn’t seen in years. While the series struggled to reconcile all these themes in its first season, Season 2 has another chance to honor its ambitions. Either way, Sugar will be a wild ride, and just the kind of thriller to kick off the summer.
