Still the best martial arts experience on television.
Note: this is a mostly spoiler-free review of Into the Badlands Season 2. I'll discuss basic character and plot details but avoid getting too deep into specifics.
Initially, it seemed like AMC might have chosen a bad time to debut Into the Badlands: Season 2. The show risked having its thunder stolen by Netflix's Iron Fist series, with both debuting within a couple days of each other. But if anything, the timing only worked in AMC's favor. Iron Fist went on to be a pretty resounding critical disappointment, whereas Into the Badlands cemented its status as the best martial arts show on the air.
"Bigger and better" really was the dominant theme of Season 2. The cast grew. There were more episodes to work with. The fight scenes became even more ambitious and epic. Even the general scope of the series received a boost. With production shifting from New Orleans to Ireland this season, creators/showrunners Alfred Gough and Miles Millar were free to open up the show and truly reflect the scope of this post-apocalyptic universe. All of these factors contributed to an improved second season.
One of the benefits of this wider scope is the fact that the show no longer felt quite as fixated on Sunny (Daniel Wu). Yes, Sunny still qualifies as the main protagonist, and his quest to return to the Badlands and rescue his family very much formed the backbone of Season 2. But that didn't stop the show from drifting away from Sunny's journey and building up other key players. The Widow (Emily Beecham) was nearly as critical to the bigger picture this year. Her quest to overthrow her fellow Barons and bring democracy to the Badlands without losing her soul in the process made her arguably the show's most compelling character. That ongoing storyline proved just as beneficial for Minerva's daughter, Tilda (Ally Iannoides) and new right-hand-man, Waldo (Stephen Lang), both of whom found themselves increasingly at odds with her as the season progressed.
M.K. (Aramis Knight) also benefited from the status quo upheaval this year, as we saw him train to become an Abbot under the watchful, not altogether benevolent eye of The Master (Chipo Chung) and learned more about the character's tragic past.
The show even managed to make some solid strides as far as the Quinn family was concerned. Baron Quinn (Marton Csokas) and his family tended to be the weak links in Season 1. And while that was still sometimes the case this year, the Quinn family drama took on a greater sense of urgency as Ryder (Oliver Stark) and Jade (Sarah Bolger) worked to consolidate their ill-gotten power and Lydia (Orla Brady) tried to find her place in an increasingly chaotic world. All of that was greatly complicated with the early reveal that Quinn not only survived his apparent death in the Season 1 finale, but had kidnapped Sunny's lover Veil (Madeleine Mantock) and formed an underground army of fanatical Clippers. Flawed though these characters may be at times, there's no denying that some of the season's strongest moments involved Quinn and his estranged family members.
It's a good thing AMC boosted the episode count to 10 this year, because that's already a lot of material and character conflicts to work through without even getting into some of this season's new additions. Sunny's long, hard journey allowed the show to introduce several new players, the most significant and memorable being Baijie, a self-interested survivor who wound up becoming a major player in Sunny's quest this year. Frost brought a welcome dose of comedy to an otherwise grim sci-fi universe. But beyond that, Baijie developed into one of the show's more compelling characters as his tragic past came into play and he was forced to make a choice between self-preservation and living up to the expectations of his new friends. The conflicts outside the Badlands introduced several other minor but memorable antagonists, including local warlord The Engineer (Stephen Walters) and Moon (Sherman Augustus), a former Clipper who offered a sobering look at the man Sunny might become without his family by his side.
Season 2 didn't necessarily address every flaw of the first. The show is, at best, very inconsistent when it comes to acting quality. Certain actors are dependably reliable. Wu played Sunny as a man haunted by his past and plagued by a single-minded obsession with returning home. He ensured that Sunny was always a sympathetic character. And Beecham made the most of her strong material all season long. Widow often straddled the line between hero and villain this year (particularly in the latter half of the season), and Beecham worked to ensure that her character is someone viewers treat with equal parts awe, disgust an pity. And again, Frost proved to be an inspired addition to the mix, both in terms of his banter with Wu and the general gravitas he brought to a deceptively simple character.
Other actors didn't fare quite so well. I've never been able to understand why, but many of the younger actors on this show (Knight and Iannoides especially) have a weirdly stiff, deliberate quality to their line delivery. Their characters too often come across as awkward and unnatural as a result. Then there's Csokas, an actor who really runs the gamut in terms of the quality of his performances. Csokas' Quinn is a very bizarre character, one marked by scenery-chewing intensity and a comically exaggerated Southern accent shared by absolutely no one else in this post-apocalyptic universe. But for as ridiculous and over-the-top as Quinn can be, Csokas did often nail the idea that this is a leader capable of whipping his followers into blind, suicidal devotion. Whether you want to label his performance good or bad, it's hard to be bored whenever Csokas is on-screen.
In general, Season 2 was paced pretty despite the significant increase in episode count. Looking back, only one episode ("Black Heart, White Mountain") really felt like filler in the grand scheme of things. But the season did run into some problems in the final episode, "Wolf's Breath, Dragon Fire." The finale did nothing to cap off the Widow's season-long story arc, pretty much leaving her and several other key players hanging as Sunny and Quinn's final showdown took precedent. Not every character got the closure they deserved in this season.
But at the end of the day, Into the Badlands is a series most fans watch for the action above all else. And if Season 1 hadn't already established this show as the best martial arts series on TV, Season 2 definitely did the trick. Each and every episode included multiple epic battles, battles so smoothly and flawlessly executed that it's a wonder how the actors and stuntmen are able to pull off these fight sequences with the time and budget constraints of a TV series. Clearly, choreographers Stephen Fung and Ku Huen-Chiu know what they're doing.
Half the fun of watching the numerous fight sequences this year involved tracing the show's many cinematic influences and witnessing the sheer variety of combat on display. Many times Wu and his opponents proved their skill with fists and blades, but several of the early episodes also saw an unarmed Sunny fighting against overwhelming odds and resorting to Jackie Chan-style gymnastics and environmental-based warfare. For every fight involving fluid, graceful combat between trained fighters, there was another marked by grimy chaos and a general sense of desperation. And often the staging and decoration were as important to these scenes as the actual choreography, particularly during the climactic final battles in "Leopard Stalks in Snow" and "Wolf's Breath, Dragon Fire." There's no higher compliment I can pay to this show than the fact that many of its fight scene put big-budget Hollywood movies to shame.
The Verdict
Into the Badlands was already an enjoyable fusion of martial arts and post-apocalyptic drama, but the show managed to improve on that formula in Season 2. The scope grew larger. The cast gained several compelling new additions alongside the old favorites. And more than ever, the show proved that it's the one to beat when it comes to delivering cinema-worthy martial arts on the small screen.
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