Summary
Surface Season 2 takes a couple of big narrative swings in Episode 4, but it’s up for debate how well they work.
You’ve got to appreciate Surface taking some chances in Season 2, even if the results might end up being a little mixed. Episode 4, “Legacy”, takes a couple of big swings that upend things for both Sophie and James, perhaps the former especially, but it’s hard to tell how people will take to them. Again, especially the former.
But I’ve been complaining since the premiere that Surface wasn’t doing enough, and I rightly predicted that the previous episode would be something of a turning point. “Legacy” is, I think, that turning point occurring. Sophie makes a big discovery that changes everything for her – you’ll see why the episode is titled the way it is – and there are various developments elsewhere that speak to a bit of daring but perhaps also to a desire to have things happening for the sake of shock, not because they’re the best possible developments for the characters.
The idea of Sophie potentially being a Huntley feels like this to me. This isn’t explicitly confirmed in any biological sense, but when she finds out that Eliza has the same music box, which is given by the Huntley patriarch to each of his children as a family tradition, Sophie puts the pieces together.
You can tell this is designed to challenge Sophie’s interpretations of who she is, especially in how her righteous quest relates to her preconceptions about the Huntleys. It’s a big, soapy twist that is unexpected but partly because it doesn’t make a great deal of narrative sense. It feels a little out of nowhere and doesn’t come with the satisfaction of a twist you can backtrace through all the different clues.
It also sets Sophie back some. Her arc across both seasons of the show has been discovering who she is and figuring out that there’s a murder she must avenge is the closest she has come to doing that. This development completely resets that progress. Sure, she still has a murder to solve, but the moral element of it is foggy now. I’m not sure Surface is well-written enough to unpack it, either. It’s a show that relies on its performances to paper over the cracks in the storytelling. Gugu Mbatha-Raw might have a bit more to chew on thanks to this, but you can feel the strain more.
Freida Pinto in Surface Season 2 | Image via Apple TV+
Then again Season 2 of Surface has made a point to provide a more even-handed view of the Huntley’s which is contrary to the earlier suspicions that they were all just moneyed madmen. Episode 2 strongly implied Quinn was responsible for Phoebe’s death and then backtracked on that a little bit by having him deny it and feign horror about it. He descends into the bottle here in “Legacy” and then, entirely by coincidence, runs into James, shortly after canceling the meeting between them.
You can absolutely see the seams here. Surface needed James in the ambit of Quinn and Grace and just conspires to make it so by coincidence, which doesn’t feel remotely natural. The whole thing takes several contrived lurches with the ultimate intention of getting James and Grace into bed together, and none of it rings remotely true. Sure, there will be consequences, but it’s hard to care about those consequences when they’re coming as a result of such arch plotting.
It’s also very funny how much Eliza has been kept running in place. There’s a scene in Surface Season 2, Episode 4 where she confronts Sophie about abandoning her that genuinely made me think I was accidentally rewatching a previous episode. This dynamic hasn’t gone anywhere since the premiere. Even Callum has been left by the wayside, which is interesting since he was evolving into one of the more compelling figures in the first couple of episodes. But here he’s mostly just relegated to passing on the right information – a video of Quinn and Phoebe, in this case – to shuffle the other characters around. The feeling of danger that was emerging disappeared as quickly as it arrived. Overall interest isn’t going to be far behind.
