WARNING: The following contains spoilers for the second season of Hanna, streaming now on Amazon Prime Video.
Season 2 of Hanna totally remodels the Utrax program that's meant to create elite assassins using female teenagers, taking them to a school at the Meadows in England to educate and integrate properly into society. However, much like the first season, there's still an air of mystery to what Utrax really wants to accomplish on a large scale, although some insight is gleaned as the second season winds down.
Still, Utrax has a very obscure mission and with Season 3 now green-lit, the show definitely needs to answer who's really running the program and what the end goal is with its kill-list.
Season 1 revealed Marissa was head of the program before it crashed and burned, leading to her assuming it got decommissioned. Viewers still don't know fully why she started it up and how she was able to make it a CIA-splinter initiative, but it's clear she did try to keep it secret and something she didn't want falling into the wrong hands. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions and Season 2 suggests it was all about putting killers like Hanna out there to take down people viewed as threats to national security.
With Carmichael restarting the program without Marissa, though, it appears he has darker intentions and has been grooming a new generation of femme fatales to take political opponents out for the Pioneer Group. This secret cabal has seeded their way into positions of power such as the CIA and is using Utrax to hunt down people -- all under the age of 30 -- they think may become power players in the sociopolitical and socioeconomic sphere. It ranges from aspiring politicians to lawyers to artists so it's a proactive measure and one that's based on offense.
But again, it's still unclear if Carmichael's bosses tricked Marissa by pretending to give her autonomy over Utrax, and that it was all part of a long-term plan to co-opt Carmichael for the new and warped vision. Season 3 has to dive into who are these shrouded figures, why they want these youths killed and what's in it for them. It could be something along the lines of The Twelve from Killing Eve, where the Pioneers actually aren't playing for one country. That would be very interesting because as it stands, Carmichael seems to think he's doing America's work, but now Marissa is looking at saving her country by using Utrax to snuff the Pioneers out, creating a unique dynamic and chess game.
However, with a group whose intentions are hidden, whose faces are a mystery and whose origins are so unknown, it's going to be hard. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, so it may well be the Pioneers are indeed corporate terrorists using organizations tied to homeland security such as the CIA to do their dirty work. That way, Utrax absolves the real players of blame, gets people like Carmichael to destabilize the world, and also create world wars from which tycoons might be able to profit.
This business aspect will be crucial because as Marissa knows, war is indeed an industry and with Utrax as a manufacturing line putting tools out there, she'll have to track the raw materials and financing down that initially allowed her to become someone's puppet. It will be a lot to unpack but this intrigue makes Hanna even more enticing because the shadowy villains really indicate there's more beneath the surface than just a super-soldier program. It also ties into Erik running away with her as he sensed Utrax was a movement way more dangerous than assumed. In fact, Season 3 would do well to reveal Utrax isn't just a program or production line -- it's a philosophy that intelligent terrorists are appropriating to shift the balance of power in the world for the next few decades.
Created by David Farr, Hanna stars Esmé Creed-Miles, Mireille Enos, Dermot Mulroney, Yasmin Monet Prince, Anthony Welsh, Cherrelle Skeete, Áine Rose Daly and Gianna Kiehl. Seasons 1 and 2 are available now on Amazon Prime Video.