The second season of Snowpiercer is addictive and thrilling

When the first season of Snowpiercer, the Netflix series, was announced, production had a lot of promises to keep. This is because the story is based on the homonymous film by Bong Joon Ho, the Korean director who won the Oscar for his film Parasite. 

That 2013 film was based on a French graphic novel, which portrayed class inequality across the train platforms and explained the social hierarchical order, themes that Bong Joon Ho addressed. Well, in the series there is a plot based on a murder mystery, which constitutes a reboot of the film's continuity.

In its first season, we met the Snowpiercer: a gigantic and constantly moving train that carries the remains of humanity 7 years after the world has turned into a frozen wasteland . With that dramatic and dystopian premise, we see that this second season of the series manages to lay the foundations much better and becomes one of Netflix's essentials. Let's see why.

The second season of Snowpiercer

The success of the second season seems to be, according to Espinof, in that it begins to distance itself from the film.

Although the first season showed interesting sparks of creativity, here they fully develop. First, we have a surprise: the appearance of Wilford, the character of the iconic actor Sean Bean, who is the creator of the train. 

Wilford's appearance is key to the series, as he manages to generate an interesting power play by coupling the Great Alice to the Snowpiercer, causing two enemies (like Melanie and Andre) to create an alliance. Wilford stands as a true villain because he is not afraid to use any means to achieve his great objective, which is to recover the train.

One of the strengths of this second season is that they manage to make very interesting political analogies with respect to this character. Yes: Wilford is a violent, obsessive and even very capricious person, but he manages to win the affection of many of the passengers. That is, as he created the train, a kind of "devotion" arises where people believe that they owe their lives to him. 

Social criticism also intensifies, as we begin to see how the most marginalized of the train admit that it does not matter who is in charge: their lives will remain the same, which represents a very interesting analogy for poverty. In a society that hangs by a thread, political struggles do not seem to reformulate the underlying problem, which is the structure of social classes.

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Hence, some members of the lower social classes feel identified with the character of Wilford, who is a revolutionary. Precisely, this unscrupulous and Machiavellian villain draws the attention of all the spectators, because we never know what he is capable of doing in order to take control of the train where the last humans on Earth survive.

In addition, the plot twists also shine in this story. This new batch of chapters features cliffhangers that make all fans stand on end, especially in the last episodes. Of course, there are some enigmas that leave the door open to the continuation in the third season that, according to Marca, would premiere in January 2022.

In the end, we saw a small group of rebels who managed to steal control of the train from Wilford in order to save Melanie Cavill. However … her character is not in the state they expected. In any case, it is suggested that their research would allow them to live outside the train, something that they had not been able to achieve until now.

Last but not least, Snowpiercer manages to portray a stark truth: while Wilford is the main villain, no one is really "good" or "bad" – everyone is struggling to survive. All train passengers have motivations not to lose their privileges and the series manages to make us recognize some attitudes that can be improved in real life.

In short, the second season of Snowpiercer ranks as one of the best Netflix series today. We recommend it.