WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for the first two episodes of Gen:LOCK Season 2, now available on HBO Max.
Gen:LOCK initially aired in January of 2019 and was co-produced by Rooster Teeth and Outlier Society Productions, Michael B. Jordan's production company (Jordan also serves as the voice talent for the protagonist). It debuted on Rooster Teeth's FIRST platform, and the first six episodes also found a home on Adult Swim before the new season recently debuted on HBO Max for 90 days before finding its home again on the FIRST streaming service.
Due in part to its hopscotch distribution, Gen:LOCK has not been given the audience it deserves as a groundbreaking, Japanese-influenced but American-made animated series. The following presents the story so far and why Gen:LOCK's continuation should be eagerly awaited after its almost three-year hiatus.
What is gen:LOCK About?
In the year 2068, New York City is attacked by the Union, a technologically superior portion of the United States that has mastered nano technology and seeks to conquer the divided country. Ace Polity Vanguard pilot Julian Chase defends the city from the skies until his aircraft is shot down and he is presumably killed in action -- but not before his sacrifice allowed his team and the city's survivors to escape.
Four years later, Chase is reunited with his old Vanguard battalion and the woman he had intended to ask to marry. He is now the pilot of a colossal, mechanized suit, called a Holon, that the Polity hopes will alter the course of the war. His body was severely damaged during the Battle of New York, and now can only sustain vital functions while immersed in a stasis tank as his mind digitally accesses his Holon and manifests himself outside the mech as a fully-formed hologram depiction of his former self.
There are five Holons and eventually five pilots to man them. Cameron 'Cammie' MacCloud is the group's hacker and technology support; Kazu Iida is the close quarters combat specialist whose heavily armored Holon is armed with a pair of swords and shotgun; Yasamin 'Yaz' Madrani's Holon sports beam weapons and submachine guns; and Valentina 'Val' Romanyszyn is a gender fluid ex-Soviet spy who serves as a long range asset equipped with a beam-powered sniper rifle and a cloaking mantle. Strangers at the outset, the team comes together through physical training, a shared mental rapport and an urgency to defeat the Union and liberate its people.
How Did Season 1 of gen:LOCK End?
At the end of Season 1, the gen:LOCK team is mourning the loss of not only Dr. Rufus Weller, the mind who conceived of the human to Holon network and assembled its pilots, but also the Anvil, their base of operations, and potentially all of the Vanguard's forces. Unable to determine how the Union and its Nemesis Holon, a mentally tortured version of protagonist Julian Chase, are able to track them, the squad is battered, beaten and perpetually on the run. Reluctant to try any attempt at contact or a rendezvous with possible survivors until they can determine how the Union is honing in on their position, the Holon pilots are isolated and losing hope.
As conversations turn toward the possibility of splitting up, they unintentionally activate protocols within the Caliban robot that informs them that it is a receptacle for all of Dr. Weller's knowledge about the program. Lost, they seek Caliban's counsel to determine their next course of action and decide to head for the Rogue Technology Aeronautics and Space Administration facility where Weller's ex-wife, Dr. Fatima Jha, is in residence. She virtually introduces them to Marc Holcroft, the primary investor behind RTASA who, along with Jha and Weller, comprised a triumvirate that were directly responsible for the genesis of gen:LOCK.
Holcroft approves the repairs and upgrades for the Holons on the condition that they capture or destroy the Nemesis, to which the group eagerly agrees just moments after finding out that the Anvil and most of the Vanguard survived the last attack. During a previous episode two of the Holon pilots, Kazu and Valentina, mindshare across the network, which results in improved tactical capabilities for both and shifts the tide of battle. It is believed that to destroy the Nemesis all five of them must commune in a mindshare to defeat him because of the superior technology at his disposal. Chase, however, is reluctant to do so, especially after sacrificing his organic body to buy time for the others to regroup and implement a plan for victory. After some persuasion Chase eventually agrees and the Holon collective obliterates the Nemesis, freeing the original Chase from the agony of his digital imprisonment.
What is Happening in Season 2 of gen:LOCK?
Four to six months since the destruction of Nemesis, the Union has copied Chase's neural pattern over and over again, creating multiple copies of the twisted Holon. Their numbers and nanotechnology have brought the Polity to the brink of extinction. Chase himself has foresworn the mindshare, even in the face of what seems to be assured annihilation for his team, Vanguard forces and what remains of the Polity, as he wrestles with the aftermath of killing broken versions of himself in perpetuity. Unbeknownst to her crew as the last decisive battle looms, General Marin deploys neural copies of her five Holon pilots into generic third generation Kamikaze mech suits to gain a tactical advantage, which proves successful, though the fallout from using suicidal mental duplicates of her most trusted warriors is sure to be incendiary.
Episode 2, "The First Strike," takes us inside the Union for the first time and it is revealed that they are a theocracy that not only uses the nanotechnology as a weapon but also as a conduit for reaching the afterlife through rites and ceremonies that consume willing supplicants to join their ancestors in revered death. Chase's mother is alive and has always been a Union zealot and this allegiance has created a rift between herself and her daughter, Chase's sister, Dri. The Union were not the instigators of the war as it turns out and their corruption of Chase's digital persona was both more thoughtful and more vile than previously suspected.
Gen:LOCK is a distinctive animated experience that pulls from the genre's best impulses and repurposes many of its most ardent tropes. There are almost no holdovers from the original writing team, but the show's spirit seems intact even if certain choices thus far feel off kilter. Mental illness, trauma recovery, technological intimacy and identity are all at the beating heart of this complex narrative and the show's scope is obviously expanding in compelling ways.
The first two episodes of Gen:LOCK Season 2 are now streaming on HBO Max, with new episodes available on Thursdays.