The star power of Julia Roberts in her first regular T -series role wasn’t the only thing that the first season of Homecoming had going for it, but it was certainly a major selling point. Roberts doesn’t appear in the new second season (although she’s still credited as an executive producer), and the show struggles to come up with a suitable replacement for her kind, sympathetic case worker Heidi Bergman, who formed the emotional center of the first season.
Most of the first season’s characters are either absent or appear in diminished roles, and while troubled military veteran Walter Cruz (Stephan James) eventually takes a central role in the plot, there’s nothing like the warm, supportive relationship he had with Heidi in the first season. The main character this time around is another troubled veteran whose memory appears to have been tampered with, Jackie Calico (Janelle Monae), who begins the first episode by waking up in a boat in the middle of a lake, with no memory of who she is or how she got there.
Jackie seems like she’s another victim of nefarious corporation Geist, which in the first season ran a rehabilitation facility for recently returned combat veterans, covertly treating them with memory-altering drugs designed to erase the experiences causing their PTSD and get them ready to return to active duty quickly. Once she understood the extent of what was going on, Heidi attempted to blow the whistle on the operation, but by the end of the season it appeared that the whole thing was being covered up, with blame shifted to Heidi’s sleazy boss Colin Belfast (Bobby Cannavale).
Much of the second season functions as an extended epilogue to the first, and creators Eli Horowitz and Micah Bloomberg have trouble making the story feel as significant and powerful. While the first season took place across two timelines several years apart, the second season -- which runs only seven episodes instead of 10 -- takes place over the course of two weeks, and mostly unfolds as a straightforward, linear narrative. Geist employee Audrey Temple (Hong Chau), who showed up briefly toward the end of the first season, is now the main company representative, and a twist at the end of the second episode connects her current project to Jackie’s experience.
Those first two episodes set up what seem to be intriguing mysteries about Jackie’s identity and about Audrey’s new role at Geist, especially as she clashes with the company’s avuncular founder, Leonard Geist (Chris Cooper). But the twist, while effective in the moment, drags the entire narrative down, as the middle episodes of the season shift back in time (the third episode is bluntly titled “Previously”) to show how Jackie and Audrey ended up where they are at the beginning.
Those episodes contain some solid suspense, especially once Walter comes back into the story, but they also fill in blanks that are pretty obvious to figure out once the twist is revealed. Rather than gradually build to important revelations, as the separate timelines did in the first season, the extended flashbacks just connect the dots along a straight line right back to where the story began.
Although the creators try to give them some emotional complexity, neither Jackie nor Audrey is a particularly sympathetic character, and while Walter is still a victim of Geist, he doesn’t have the same soulful vulnerability that he had in the first season, as he’s also now a supporting character, rather than the lead. So this season lacks both a protagonist to root for and a truly nasty villain, like Cannavale’s Colin, to hate, and the story leans into the sci-fi elements, downplaying the serious themes about trauma and memory that gave the first season extra depth.
The 30-minute episodes are still swiftly paced, and the season is easy to binge, with a few intriguing ideas that could pay off in future seasons. But changing the focus from the military rehabilitation program to Geist itself turns Homecoming into just another show about corporate greed and technology run amok. Joan Cusack joins the cast in the second half of the season as the kind of shady military commander with vaguely defined authority who’s always pulling the strings in shows like this, and she never evolves beyond that stock characterization.
Monae and James effectively play some of the righteous fury of the people who’ve been wronged by Geist, although the inscrutable nature of Monae’s character means that she doesn’t get to explore any emotional development over the course of the season. It’s fun to catch some of the familiar faces from the first season in brief roles, although they’re mostly reminders of how much stronger the show was back then.
After directing all of the first-season episodes, Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail is only credited as an executive producer this time around, and Kyle Patrick Alvarez (who recently helmed episodes of 13 Reasons Why and fellow slow-burn sci-fi series Counterpart) takes over behind the camera. Alvarez drops the multiple aspect ratios that were Esmail’s visual signature, and the cinematography is much less intricate and fussy this time around, although Alvarez still goes for the occasional elaborate long take. Like everything about this season, the look is more streamlined and more conventional, making the show a bit easier to watch, but less distinctive and memorable.
Starring Janelle Monae, Hong Chau, Joan Cusack, Chris Cooper and Stephan James, the seven-episode second season of Homecoming premieres Friday on Amazon Prime.