Russian Doll S2 trailer is a trippy time traveling delight

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvEyUOoLehI

A mysterious portal through time opens up in the New York City subway in the first trailer of season 2 of russian dollNetflix’s Emmy Award-winning sci-fi dramedy that was an Ars Technica favorite in 2019. Co-stars Natasha Lyonne and Charlie Barnett (reprise their roles, this time confronting a different kind of supernatural phenomenon on their existential journey.

(Spoilers for the first season below.)

Season one’s plot, co-created by Lyonne, Amy Poehler, and Leslye Headland, centered around a chain-smoking game developer named Nadia Vulvokov (Lyonne), who died repeatedly on the night of her 36th birthday party and kept returning to the funky of the host. East Village bathroom.

Naturally, Nadia wanted to get to the bottom of what was going on, though her detective work was hampered by repeated accidental deaths. Then she met a young man named Alan (Barnett) in an elevator who also relived the same day – the day he proposed to his girlfriend and discovered she’d been having an affair. Soon, Nadia and Alan realized that there could be a crucial connection between them.

In the season finale, Nadia and Alan got stuck in two separate timelines, each with a version of the other oblivious to the time loop connecting the original versions. Nadia saves the alternate version of Alan in her timeline, while Alan saves the alternate Nadia in his timeline, breaking the circle. In the final scene, it is implied that the pair become friends in both timelines.

Season one rightly received critical acclaim when it debuted in 2019.”russian doll is a weird, brutal, thoroughly enjoyable ride that deserves all the accolades it’s gotten,” I wrote in my review. “The facial jokes and whip-smart dialogue are priceless. And much credit goes to Lyonne as his raspy-voiced star. She’s smart, tough, uncompromising, rude in her mouth and unapologetic about her lifestyle, but she’s haunted by past trauma and regret — and also able to shine moments of generosity and selflessness.”

Season one was so perfect, I would have been happy if the series ended there. But with Lyonne returning as both star and showrunner, there’s a good chance the second season could be just as great, especially with the addition of Schitt’s CreekAnnie Murphy for the cast. According to the official premise:

This season, Nadia and Alan discover a fate worse than an endless death and delve deeper into their past through an unexpected time portal in one of Manhattan’s most infamous locations, the New York City subway. At first, they perceive this as an ever-expanding, era-spanning, intergenerational adventure, but they soon discover that this extraordinary event may be more than they expected and together they must find a way out.

As the trailer opens, Nadia is on the subway when Horse (Brendan Sexton III), the homeless man she befriended in season one, yells, “Is that your train?” Then Nadia wakes up in a subway in the 1980s. When she tells Alan (now with a thin mustache) that she’s become a “time prisoner,” he naturally asks if he should worry, given what happened the last time Nadia’s reality started to warp. As she says, “Inexplicable things that happen is my whole modus operandi.”

Things get pretty trippy from there, with Nadia wondering if she and Alan have any unfinished business left. At least part of the plot involves a family who “lost their gold twice in a train.” And it seems that Nadia’s BFF, Maxine (Greta Lee), is also up to the supernatural.

russian doll season two arrives on Netflix on April 20, 2022.

Listing image by YouTube/Netflix