Two years ago, Invisible City became Netflix’s biggest Brazilian hit. It’s not hard to see why; it’s about mythical entities that tie into the country’s legends. It’s also a good-looking series with lots of visual effects. But it’s also as much of a mystery story as anything else. Will it be able to have the same winning combo in Season 2?
INVISIBLE CITY SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: A shot of lush rainforest vegetation. “The Amazon, Pará.”
The Gist: Deep in the Amazon rainforest, an illegal gold mining operation is underway, and it’s not yielding much. One of the workers is grabbed by what looks like a giant water snake, but the boss knows better; he tranquilizes it, and later that night, he sees the Native that had morphed into the sea creature. He’s holding the man because he’s the key to get into Marangatu, with its wealth of gold available to mine.
Traveling on the river is Luna (Manu Dieguez) and Inês (Alessandra Negrini), leader of the entities, the mythical shape-shifting creatures that Luna and her father Eric (Marco Pigossi) discovered two years prior. Since Eric disappeared after he took the Dry Body entity from Luna, then killed it, Luna and Inês have been spending the last two years looking for him.
They’re about to enter a swamp where Luna thinks her father is, but Inês blocks her, saying “it’s not ours” to walk into without permission. Back in the city of Belém, Luna tries to summon an entity that will help bring back Eric; a spirit named Matinta Pere (Letícia Spiller) appears and grants Luna’s wish, but wants someone in exchange.
Back in that swamp, Eric wakes up, disoriented. As he wanders to the dig site, he sees someone being murdered, which turns out to be the man who turns snake; he won’t help the cartel boss with his plan to steal all of that gold. Eric also sees an old man tied up and lets him go. When he’s discovered, the ensuing fight causes him to accidentally set the dig site on fire; he’s injured in the explosion.
Telma Dyora (Kay Sara), from the District Attorney’s office, starts to question Eric in the hospital, thinking he was involved in the dig. But then he tells them someone killed a Native. Before she can get back to questioning him, though, a kid named Bento (Tomás de França), who seems to have werewolf characteristics, helps him escape. For his help, though, Bento asks Eric, who was known to try to remove curses from entities, to remove his curse. It works, with Eric now taking on Bento’s powers.
Eric eventually reunites with Luna; he’s amazed how much she’s grown, and finds it hard to believe he’s been away for so long. When Inês tells him that both he and Luna are entities like her now, he can’t believe it. He just wants to bring her back home and live life. Little do they know that Matinta Pere has come to collect on her deal with Luna.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? When we reviewed Season 1 of Invisible City, we compared it to The Protector, which also involved a mythical entity. That comparison still holds.
Our Take: Our main complaint about Season 1 of Invisible City was that it held its mythical cards too close to the vest most of the time, giving out details on the entities in dribs and drabs. Now that the idea of the entities and what they’re capable of are fully out in the open, Season 2 is more about how Eric, now a full entity, deals with the powers he has and how he works with Inês to find Luna.
The other big part is that a woman named Debora (Zahy Tentehar) is looking to get into Marangatu, and auction off its riches. Of course, it all ties together, so while Eric and Inês team up to find Luna, they’re also going to deal with Debora and her insistence on plundering this mystical Native territory.
It does feel like the show has now set up a paradigm where Eric struggles against his status as an entity, but now will find himself in new situations every season. If that’s the case, that’s fine with us. It gives the writers the opportunity to explore different Brazilian myths and legends through the new entities that Eric comes across. Also, with the season in Belém instead of Rio, viewers will see a different urban landscape, a smaller city with more of a charming, older vibe. All of that makes the prospect of watching Season 2 a whole lot more interesting to us than it was for Season 1.
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Sex and Skin: Besides Eric waking up naked, nothing.
Parting Shot: Eric hears Luna scream, goes back to her cabin, and see’s she’s gone; the only thing there is a white owl. He screams and pounds on the wall, and is surprised by how strong he is.
Sleeper Star: Zahy Tentehar is appropriately evil-creepy as Debora, and she seems to be a good “big bad” for the season.
Most Pilot-y Line: “My mission is to give my daughter a normal life,” says Eric after, um, being preserved in a swamp for two years. Your life hasn’t been normal in a while, buddy.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Invisible City seems to be in a good groove in Season 2, in a new location and showing a new set of mythical entities. With most of the big reveals out of the way, watching Eric figure out his new abilities should be a fun watch.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
