Undone season 2 is out to fix everything ever

Season one of UnfinishedIt was concluded with deliberate ambiguity. In the eight first episodes, Amazon Prime’s original blurred the lines of what was true and what wasn’t. By the end, nothing was confirmed. Alma (Rosa Salazar), after making contact with her father’s body, slips into time to try and solve his mystery. In the finale, we’re not sure if she was able to — or even if Alma was actually time traveling or if she was exhibiting symptoms of the mental illness that led to her grandmother’s institutionalization.

Alma is now facing a different challenge in Season 2. Alma now has a new challenge. Where once she had alienated her family she is now able to bring more people into the fold. Unfinished from an exploration of one woman’s mental health into a generation-spanning saga. It is made from Bojack HorsemanRaphael Bob–Waksberg’s creator and writer Kate Purdy feel both similar and distinct. It expands the scope and tackles different issues than the first season, but ultimately builds up to a similar climatic point — and similarly ends with more questions than answers.

[Ed. note: This review contains major spoilers for Undone’s first season and slight spoilers for the second.]

Image: Amazon Prime Video

Season 1 Unfinished left it unclear whether the timey-wimey escapades were real or symptoms of Alma’s splintering mind, season 2 answers that immediately: It was all real, and Alma walks through a mysterious temple to another timeline, where her father, Jacob (Bob Odenkirk), is alive and her life is pretty good, all things considered. She is now a PhD Candidat who assists her father with his research. Initially, it’s easy for Alma to enjoy this new life. But she slowly grows restless, and begins to notice that this idyllic timeline isn’t as peaceful as she thought it would be. Alma finds out that Becca, her younger sister (Angelique Cabral), is also in the picture. You can also see it here has time travel powers — and that her mother is having a rough time right now with a problem she refuses to talk about.

This is not the same as in season one. Unfinished, the second is a family affair — and for the better. Alma was at war with her sister and mother in the first season. She had lost the special connection she shared with her father. It ends with Alma accepting that she requires help. She reluctantly turns to her sister. Alma, however, is actively involved in pulling her family together during this season. She realizes that these powers don’t just affect those who have them but everyone in proximity, spanning back in time to her enigmatic grandmother.

The theme of confronting generationsal trauma is common in television and movies these days. Much the same. It’s time to turn red, EncantoPlease see the following: You can have everything at once, Unfinished uses magical elements to examine one family’s complicated past and how the trauma one person undergoes ripples through generations. Just when Alma thinks she’s solved one mystery, she discovers another, and she believes she needs to keep going back in order to get it all right.

Image: Prime Video

As in the original season Unfinished’s season 2 animation is done in a rotoscoped style, drawn over filmed clips of the actors. The choice was particularly evocative in the first season, when Alma wasn’t sure what was real and saw the world around her twist and shatter depending on the choices she made. Now, Alma and her family mostly use their powers to slip into other people’s pasts and memories. The backgrounds are not what Alma saw of the world. They become moments from the past and smoke, obscuring memories some don’t want to confront. It’s similarly resonant, pushing past the animation clouding whether everything was real or not and into new, vivid territory.

In all the twisting and turning, it comes down to this: Unfinished’s themes end up getting a bit muddled. Alma insists on using her family’s powers to go back and fix things time and time again, pushing Becca and her father to the brink. Becca interrupts Alma to ask if they could focus their efforts on the future. Alma refuses. Purdy, Bob-Waksberg seem to be arguing for the same views (trying change the past or focusing on present), and it makes each one of them feel weaker. Alma wants everything to be happy and good. She will use every opportunity to make things right, even though it means putting her family in jeopardy. Even though time travel can fix all things, sometimes it is necessary to face the hard truths. This would hit harder, however, if she, her father, and her sister did not use their powers to dive deep into their family’s past in order to reach that revelation.

Then again, Unfinished built its premise on being unclear, blurring the lines between what was real and what was in Alma’s head. It seems like most of the season is actually happening in real life, particularly as Alma introduces more characters to the mix. It is, however, ambiguous at the end. And in that ambiguity, those murky themes don’t feel like they necessarily have to be resolved one way or another. Unfinished The season was a little slow this time, with secrets after secrets being revealed and layers to be undone (pun intended). The conclusion is equal parts devastating and hopeful, and even if the specifics of its journey could be stronger, it’s still an emotional and aching gut punch that makes us all wonder what could’ve been.

The eight episode of UnfinishedSeason 2 is available on Amazon Prime starting April 29.