WARNING: The following contains spoilers for the second season of Hanna, streaming now on Amazon Prime Video.
Season 1 of Hanna, much like the film, sees Marissa Wiegler (Mireille Enos) hunting Hanna (Esme Creed-Miles) and Erik (Joel Kinnaman) so she could retrieve her super-soldier. However, the second season changes things up drastically with Marissa becoming an ally to Hanna after Erik's death.
It's all to ensure the rebooted Utrax program doesn't get its hands on Hanna to weaponize her. However, Hanna and other girls with her potential are of great interest to the new boss John Carmichael (Dermot Mulroney), which to leads to him trying to use them to undo a major mess he made in Washington that could jeopardize everything he worked for.
Carmichael cuts a sinister figure from the very start, moving the girls to the Meadows in England. At this facility, he wants to work more on their social skills and appeal to their human side, shifting things around to be a female boarding school basically. However, when news of a list arises that could incriminate him and Utrax as a terrorist threat, Carmichael is forced to put the assassins in the field.
The series holds its hand on the list early on, but little by little we discover it's a kill-list that Carmichael had, not realizing it got leaked. A military lawyer, Robert Gelder, got ahold of it and is now planning to offer it up to two journalists, Nicola Gough in London, and Alba Paredes in Barcelona. Flashbacks, however, show Carmichael and Robert meeting at what seems to be a lounge leaving fans wondering if they were in cahoots at some point.
As the drop date nears, Carmichael's in full-blown panic mode, sending Hanna and Jules to London to neutralize the threat, culminating in Jules killing Nicola. However, the reason Hanna switches sides is Stephen Mannion and his mysterious cell meet her and confirm that the list consists of political targets that Carmichael and his bosses, the Pioneer Group, plan to take out. They're short of more details, but it's enough to sway Hanna, reminding her how Erik hated Utrax and why Marissa wants her out. Jules also kills Stephen so Hanna's convinced Carmichael's up to no good.
The Barcelona mission reveals it all as Hanna actually gets ahold of the list after Robert, and then Alba, are killed at a hotel. She brings it to Marissa and it's quite shocking to see all the targets are under 30, some as young as 14. When Marissa gets the better of Carmichael after a shootout takes his crew out in the finale, he admits these people are to be killed early on before they become full-blown power players in world politics and social justice movements. They consist of kids of wealthy folks, musicians and artists and even aspiring politicians. Pioneer has been infiltrating America's top government agencies and as part of their world domination plans, Carmichael has been tasked with killing the youth who'd become the opposition to their vision.
Unfortunately, he made a huge blunder when he got drunk at a Washington bar and revealed the list to Robert. It's not certain if Carmichael was trying to impress him or co-opt him, but when Carmichael gets distracted by a beautiful woman, Robert takes photos of the list on his phone, which he'd then print out a hard copy for the journalists. He didn't even want to risk sending them online as he knows Carmichael has resources that could hack him but eventually, the Utrax head found out and realized he needed to fix the situation stat. This would lead to him coming to Barcelona to see about the disaster himself because if his bosses found out, he'd be a dead man. Ultimately, as much as Carmichael is intelligent when it comes to training assassins, he's still a foolish man who easily gets distracted by a pretty face.
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.