Summary
In its quietly excellent finale, Sugar Season 2 provides a satisfying payoff for its title character’s arc while also opening up the worldbuilding for more sci-fi-oriented storytelling to come.
John Sugar has solved another case, but that was never really the point of Sugar Season 2. I think that becomes really obvious in Episode 8, “Like Sugar”, which does away with the Fire Sale plot in the first ten minutes and then endeavours to revolve the season’s proper ending around its title character’s arc and the wider worldbuilding potential of the subtle sci-fi premise. It’s a good idea, making for a quietly lovely finale, and also setting up Season 3 if Apple TV considers the show a goer.
It also leaves us with a fair amount to break down, including what happens with Danny and Ji Moon, what Charlotte has been up to all this time, and at whose behest, and what Project Acalia is. So, without further ado…
The Fire Sale Is Over
We might as well start with the Fire Sale stuff, since it’s clearly of lesser importance than everything else. In fact, it’s largely done away with in a flurry of scenes that feel more like a coda to Sugar’s murder of Ray Vega than anything else.
Justice is, fundamentally, done. Vega’s dead, but Sugar’s keeping that detail to himself. The rest of the conspirators, including the corrupt sheriff’s deputies, have been rounded up and arrested. We never really got a sense of how deep the rabbit hole ran here, but Sugar has a fairly good idea. When Assemblywoman Spiro approaches him to congratulate him and lament the fact that Vega “got away”, Sugar points out that in an operation of such complexity, with so many moving parts depending on political corruption and influence, Vega was highly unlikely to be at the top of the food chain.
To prove his point, Spiro is arrested along with everyone else.
Unhappily Ever After
Sugar is aimless after the conclusion of the Fire Sale case. His only solace is Charlotte, who is busy herself, but they snatch some moments together, lounging around and relishing their romance, which has evolved fairly organically throughout the season.
Charlotte even suggests that Sugar move to Milan with her. But she accidentally lets a line slip about all his friends being gone that tips Sugar off. He knows it, she knows it. They say nothing to each other, but the atmosphere is frosty. When Sugar leaves her at the hotel, it feels like goodbye. When Charlotte goes to her room, she sobs and calls someone to tell them that she made a mistake and “he knows”.
Charlotte later confesses to Sugar that their original meeting was planned. She was instructed to get close to him and see how he was getting on. But everything else, including their romance, was apparently genuine.
Sister Act
Sugar Season 2, Episode 8 reveals that Charlotte was working at the behest of Sugar’s sister, Djen. When she’s found out, she arranges a meeting between Sugar and his long-lost sister, who he had assumed was dead. However, Henry, who implied as much in the premiere, was similarly protecting Djen’s secret, and that meant hiding what she was up to from Sugar.
Whatever she was up to required a level of devotion that Sugar didn’t yet have. More importantly, it required a level of understanding of Earth and human culture that he also didn’t have, but that he has been developing this season. Ironically, his fears of assimilation were bringing him closer and closer to the sister he thought he had lost. In understanding the cruelty and callousness of humanity, Sugar is closer to understanding the point of view that Djen surmised he wasn’t ready for.
Djen believes, essentially, that humanity’s damage to their home planet can’t be allowed to continue, and that it is the responsibility of their species to do something about that rather than remaining as passive observers. This led her to create some technology in a project with the four-circle logo that Sugar has been trying to figure out all season through Pavich’s relationship with Stanley. This caused a divide among her people; Henry for, and Ruby and the others against, which is why she exposed them, forcing them to leave.
Djen has been the secret architect of Sugar’s misery for the entire season.
What is Project Acalia?
As was hinted at by Stanley earlier in the season, Djen’s plan involves using tropospheric nodes to control the climate. This is part of something called Project Acalia, which seems to be a wide-scale terraforming mission. She displays the technology to a group of wealthy investors at Pavich’s home, where Sugar and Charlotte are also in attendance, creating localised rainfall, snow, and sunlight.
After demonstrating this power, Charlotte knocks Sugar out with a mysterious powder. While he’s drifting out of consciousness, she explains what I mentioned earlier about how her feelings for him were real. Djen also explains what will likely become Season 3’s plot – this project isn’t really for the humans, as she has claimed, but for their own species.
What does this mean? It’s a little unclear. She may be trying to save Earth, but only so that a later invasion of sorts can take place, with her having decided that human beings alone aren’t trustworthy enough stewards of the planet. We’ll have to wait and see.
Either way, Sugar and Wiley, whom he gets back thanks to a cameo by Jonathan, will be there. And so will we.
