Altered Carbon combines aspects of cyberpunk and sci-fi noir in Netflix’s 2018 series based on the novel by Richard K. Morgan. Season two just dropped in February, and before watching, fans might need a little brush up on the important details of season one.
Set about 800 years in the future, Earth is a very different place. The great divide of wealth has become impossible to surpass, as the wealthy have become akin to gods known as Meths. Thanks to a technology called Digital Human Freight, human consciousness can be uploaded into “stacks”. Humans can essentially achieve immortality by inhabiting different bodies, called “resleeving”, with the same stacks. Confused yet? Here are the main plot points of season one.
10 Takeshi Awakens
The story begins with a flashback of Takeshi Kovacs being arrested by the Praetorians, the violent interstellar “Protectors”. 250 years later, he is awoken after being kept “on ice” – essentially his stack was kept dormant until he is re-sleeved into a new body.
He is released on parole and leased by Bancroft Industries in order to solve a murder. He is met by the chatty Kristin Ortega, Bay City PD detective, who grills him for information. She drives him to Suntouch House, a mansion so tall it is beyond the clouds, and there he meets the man who freed him.
9 The Job
Laurens Bancroft is one of the richest men on earth, having lived for centuries thanks to the stack technology. He’s awoken Kovacs to solve his own murder – one he survived thanks to his consciousness being backed up to a satellite seconds before his death. Thankfully, he had a vault full of clones waiting for him to resleeve into.
His death looks like a suicide, but Bancroft is convinced he was murdered. Due to his stack being destroyed, he has no recollection of the 48 hours leading up to his death. He explains he hired Kovacs for his Envoy intuition and that he will give Kovacs a full pardon if he can solve the murder.
8 The Raven
Kovacs takes the night to think about Bancroft’s offer. He is again met by Ortega, who is full of questions about why Bancroft has asked him to take on the case. Ortega and her team had followed every lead they could, and it led them to nothing.
Kovacs checks into an AI hotel, The Raven, where he is attacked by Dimi the Twin and some goons. He is assisted by the proprietor of the hotel, Poe, who kills Dimi, although his stack survives. Kovacs decides that if someone is out to get him after 250 years on ice, Bancroft must have been murdered.
7 Sifting Through The Evidence
Kovacs’ investigation leads him to a man called Vernon Elliot. He discovers that Elliot’s daughter Lizzie had been murdered. Lizzie was working as a prostitute at a brothel called Jack It Off, and Elliot blamed Bancroft for her death, as he was a customer of hers. Elliot still has his daughter’s stack, and it is apparent that she is stuck in a trauma loop.
Kovacs takes a trip to Jack It Off and discovers that Bancroft has violent tendencies towards working girls and buys them new sleeves if he kills them. Kovacs is invited to a party at the Bancroft estate and asks Elliot to be his wingman at the party in exchange for Poe performing psychosurgery on Lizzie. Besides the Meths being pretty shady, Kovacs doesn’t get many leads from the party.
6 Putting The Pieces Together
Kovacs is kidnapped and tortured by Dimi, who keeps referring to him as Ryker. Ortega later confesses that Kovacs was resleeved in the body of her old partner and lover, Ryker, who was arrested on bogus charges and put on ice.
They discover footage of Bancroft beating his son Isaac and this leads them to Isaac’s apartment. They discover an illegal 3-D bio-organic printer and a printed clone of Bancroft himself. It appears Isaac has been impersonating his father. Kovacs accuses Isaac of the murder, but he has an alibi for the time of his death. Ortega is gravely injured by the Ghostwalker but Kovacs pays her hospital bill, which includes a bionic arm.
5 The Truth
Kovacs and Ortega get themselves in a sticky situation at Fightdrome are rescued by a mysterious figure, who turns out to the none other than Kovacs’ sister Rei. Kovacs believed she had died along with the love of his life, Quell, at the Battle of Stronghold.
After questioning Rei about the circumstances of Quell’s death, he finds a room full of sleeves that his sister has been using to pull the strings of people surrounding the investigation. Not only was Rei responsible for Quell’s death, but she also played Bancroft into spinning up Kovacs and involving him in the investigation. She tells him that he needs to come up with a suspect so that Bancroft will close the case.
4 The Frame Job
Kovacs gets Elliot’s wife, Ava, released in order to help him with the frame job. The Elliots are reunited with their daughter Lizzie in virtual, where she’s been training in martial arts and knife throwing under the tutelage of Poe.
Kovacs frames Bancroft’s lawyer, Oumou Prescott, for the murder. She is stripped of her reputation and title, and Kovacs is granted his pardon. After spinning his elaborate tale, Kovacs realizes why Bancroft must’ve killed himself, and that it has something to do with a brothel called Head In The Clouds.
3 Head In The Clouds
In order to foil his sister’s plan for him, Kovacs uses the 3-D printer to create a clone of himself, which takes off on a tropical sex vacation with Miriam Bancroft. Elliot poses as a Meth so that the team can hack into Head In The Clouds. Rei’s backup is spiked with a virus to prevent her from using her remotely backed up consciousness, so she can’t spin back up again.
It comes to light that Rei dosed Bancroft with an aggression enhancer, Stallion, knowing it would cause him to real-death a working girl so that she could blackmail him into killing Resolution 653. The bill would allow even people with religious coding to be spun back up to accuse their murders – something which would put her out of business. Rei explains that Bancroft did indeed kill himself, because he wanted to forget causing the real death of the working girl, and his arrogance wouldn’t let him believe it was a suicide.
2 Retribution
Poe is disintegrated by one of Rei’s lackeys but before he dies, he sends Lizzie’s consciousness to Head In The Clouds. She casts herself into one of the synthetic sleeves on the ship and beings to take out all of Rei’s henchmen one by one. She cuts power to the ship, and it begins losing altitude.
Rei tells Kovacs that Quell is still alive and offers to give her to him if he helps her escape. Kovacs declines, shoots her in the stack, and decides to go down with the ship while everyone else evacuates. Luckily, he is kept company by his ever-present hallucination of Quell.
1 The Aftermath
Kovacs’ stack was pulled from the wreckage and he has to make a decision which version of himself gets to live – his clone or himself. The first Kovacs survives. Ortega gives a recording of Rei’s confession to the media and Bancroft is ruined. When the police go to arrest him, Lizzie shows up and reveals that as she was pregnant with Bancroft’s child, and it was Miriam Bancroft who killed her.
Bancroft leaves everything to his son Isaac, Ava Elliot is pardoned, Resolution 653 is passed, and Kovacs gives Ryker’s sleeve back. Kovacs is cleared of all charges and is free to pursue his lost love, Quell.