FIGHT FOR SURVIVAL
Netflix thriller ‘Sense8’ will form deep connection with fans
The thing about looking for monsters is that once you get started, you keep finding them.
That’s something that comes to mind watching the exciting new season of Netflix’s “Sense8,” from the Wachowskis (“The Matrix”) and J. Michael Straczinski (“Babylon 5”), available today.
All across the world, eight strangers have accepted their connection — they are “sensates,” able to communicate psychically with each other and lend their talents and skills to each other in moments of crisis.
Now they seek the shadowy organization that seeks to control them.
With Will (Brian J. Smith) risking his life, they try to turn the tables on the mysterious Whispers (Terrence Mann), who has been hunting sensates.
They don’t know what they are up against, but they are united in their determination to protect each other and end the threat.
Each person, of course, has her or his own journey. Among the notable interludes in the opening episodes: Lito (Miguel Angel Silvestre) endures a career backlash now that he has been outed.
Wolfgang (Max Riemelt) drifts under the influence of a money launderer with a girlfriend who enjoys mind games and more.
Capheus (Toby Onwumere) becomes a media sensation in Nairobi for an act of heroism.
Sun’s (Doona Bae) ordeal in prison becomes more precarious when her brother orders a hit on her.
“Where did a banker’s daughter learn to be a car thief?” another inmate wonders.
“Other lives,” she says, more truthfully than her friend can possibly understand.
Angelica (Daryl Hannah), the “mother” of the cluster, lurks about. Odd how everyone around her seems to end up dead.
For its sophomore season, the show filmed in such places as Berlin, Chicago, Mumbai, Sao Paulo, Amsterdam, Malta and Seoul.
No other scripted series clocks so many hours traveling the globe for the most authentic shots, and it must take a crew of obsessive compulsives to piece it all together in the editing bays. Cast members drop in and out of scenes and locations as other characters interact with them psychically. It’s a dizzying, bewildering, wonderful joy to watch their communal moments.
Not since “Lost” or the early seasons of “The Walking Dead” have I been this wrapped up in a group of characters’ survival and well-being.
In this political climate, “Sense8” does more than entertain, it makes a statement about global unity, about people of all ethnicities, sexualities and gender identities working together. In that respect, they are just as inspirational and aspirational as Gene Roddenberry’s cast of the original “Star Trek” in the 1960s.
“This is our world for our dreams,” Capheus says, refusing to let anyone else define his vision or his life. There’s a lot about “Sense8” to take to heart.