Altered Carbon: Every Episode From Season 1 On Netflix Summarized & Recapped
Netflix’s Altered Carbon has a new season out. This time Marvel actor Anthony Mackie takes on the main role of Takeshi Kovac. The first season got good reviews when it first premiered back in 2018. Fans were in high anticipation to see how the second season would play out and now fans can binge watch the new storyline.
The show is originally based on the novel, of the same name, by English author Richard K.Morgan. Before you dive into the new season streaming on Netflix, there are some facts and details that need to be remembered. No worries, here’s a full summary of the first season full of futuristic technology, deceit, memories of the past and some amazing fight sequences.
10 Episode 1: Out Of The Past
The first episode of the season can seem a little confusing, but it will soon make sense. Audiences are introduced to Takeshi Kovac (Will Yun Lee) in a past body. This version soon gets killed and awakens two and a half centuries later in a new body.
In the near future, science has developed “sleeves” and “cortical stacks”. Those who can afford it can have their memories uploaded to a cortical stack and can interchange their physical bodies or sleeves. Kovac (Joel Kinnaman) is hired by an eccentric rich man named Laurens Bancroft. He wants Kovac to solve his murder with evidence uploaded before his death suggesting suicide. Kovac is at first uninterested until a hitman tries to eradicate him and believes Bancroft really was murdered.
9 Episode 2: Fallen Angel
Kovac starts to experience hallucinations of ash falling and memories of his past. This is when audiences learn that Kovac was an envoy, a group of highly trained mercenaries, who were attacked by a group of killers. Kovac runs into detective Ortega (Martha Higareda) who is keeping tabs on him, but both find out they are investigating the same suspects.
The death of two young women, one named Lizzie (Hayley Law) who is stuck in a VR simulation of a trauma loop. Kovac finds out that Lizzie was seeing Bancroft and he had a tendency to choke women. At the end of the episode, Kovac and Miriam Bancroft (Kristin Lehman) seem to have been recorded during their sexual encounter. There is a final scene of Bancroft speaking to Ortega in his library.
8 Episode 3: In A Lonely Place
The episode opens with a flashback scene to Kovac’s childhood with his younger sister. Back in the present, Kovac is invited to a fancy party at the Bancrofts. Ortega is in attendance as well as she will be monitoring Bancroft’s request for a stage fight to entertain his guests. Kovac learns that a married couple will fight to the sleeve death and will later be given new sleeves if they succeed.
Kovac learns that Bancroft’s daughter uses her mother’s sleeve for some fun. He is now uncertain about who could have possibly killed Bancroft. Kovac later is forced to intervene in the sleeve fight. After the party, Kovac visits his hooker informant, Alice, who is forced to double-cross him.
7 Episode 4: Force Of Evil
Kovac wakes up in a place called Wei Clinic. He is then held captive by the twin of an assassin Kovac killed in the first episode. He plans to torture him to death and bring him back until he admits he is a man named Ryker. A bulk of the episode takes place in virtual reality. In order to survive, Kovac reverts back to his training with Quellcrist Falconer.
He remembers his training on how to survive torture, while Ortega re-sleeves her grandmother’s cortical stack in convicted convict for Dias De Los Muertos. Kovac is able to awaken back to reality and kills everyone in sight for revenge. Ortega responds to the disturbance and finds Kovac with a severed head in his room questioning her on why she is so interested in him.
6 Episode 5: The Wrong Man
In this episode, audiences find out why Ortega is so obsessed with Kovac. Kovac’s sleeve was formerly Officer Elias Ryker, Ortega’s life partner. Ryker was obsessed with finding out the truth of the death of the girl who fell from the sky. Meanwhile, Kovac isn’t in the best mood when visiting Miriam. Miriam insists that Kovac drop the case and warns him that Bancroft will only take his anger out on him.
Kovac declines Miriam’s offer. He and Ortega watch footage of Bancroft’s whereabouts the night before his death. They find that Bancroft was viciously beating on his son, Isaac. They start to suspect that Isaac used his father’s sleeve and Bancroft found out. Audiences also learn that Ryker was framed for the murder of the girl who fell from the sky. Ortega and Kovac are attacked by the assassin “Ghost Walker”.
5 Episode 6: Man With My Face
Episode six starts out fully loaded. Ortega has been brutally attacked and Kovac is rushing to find her help at the nearest hospital. Using Bancroft’s money, they are able to upgrade her treatment. Kovac, ready to confront Isaac, finds out that Isaac couldn’t have killed his father. He only wanted his respect.
Back at the hospital, Kovac and Ortega find out Captain Tanaka (Hiro Kanagawa) gets paid to keep people in the loop. He helps Kovac and Ortega track down a contact, but things go wrong. When they leave the VR, they are in chains and kidnapped to be sent to the Fight Drome.
4 Episode 7: Nora Inu
Audiences learn the full details of Kovac’s past. He and Ortega are rescued from the Fight Drome by Reileen (Dichen Higareda) Kovac’s sister, now an assassin. Kovac believed Rei was killed in an aircraft explosion along with Quell. We learn that Kovac was recruited by CTAC (Colonial Tactical Assault Core) to become a trained killer and was promised that they would keep Rei safe.
In the real world, Kovac finds out Rei was sold to the Yakuza. In flashbacks, Kovac is trained by Quell to use his sleeve and become an Envoy. Quell is the creator of a vital stack program. There is an attack by CTAC at the Envoy base. Kovac finds out that Rei killed Quell and had her stack uploaded before the ship was destroyed.
3 Episode 8: Clash By Night
Unable to digest Rei’s treachery, he finds out that the Ghost Walker and Wei Clinic are all her doing. She also used various sleeves to become the snake at Bancroft’s party and Hemmingway the mysterious figure in control of the city. Rei urges Kovac to close the case, even if it means framing someone else.
Kovac and Rei use sleeves to convince the Bancroft’s that their attorney, Prescott was behind it all. Ortega doesn’t trust Rei and sneaks into her room and finds multiple sleeves. She is under attack by one and fends off multiple backups. She falls for the little girl sleeve from previous episodes, unaware it’s a trap.
2 Episode 9: Rage In Heaven
Ortega returns to Kovac from Head in the Clouds bloodied and beaten. It’s not Ortega, but Rei in a sleeve. She vows to kill everything Ortega loves. She sends Ghost Walker to kill her entire family. Kovac realizes he has to stop Rei’s stack backup in order to get a confession.
Rei confesses that she drugged Bancroft and he “re-deathed” Lizzie. Mary Lou killed herself by jumping from the Clouds hoping her stack will be evidence, unaware that Rei had control over the police. Rei wanted to stop 653, a group against re-sleeving, and she needed Bancroft and used Miriam to poison him. Bancroft, riddled with guilt, killed himself.
1 Episode 10: The Killers
As things go awry in Head in the Clouds, the AI, Poe is under attack at the hotel and uploads Lizzie to the Clouds main system. Lizzie takes revenge on the people who pay to kill sex workers and frees Ortega from her VR torture. As a fight ensues, Kovac’s companions work to take down the ship. Having the opportunity to kill Rei, she informs Kovac that she backed up Quell’s stack before her death.
Kovac realizes what he must do and kills Rei. He goes down with the ship, but he was “double-sleeved” and they retrieved the stack from the wreckage. In the end, they also find out that Lizzie was impregnated by Bancroft and Miriam beat her into an abortion and sent her to Wei Clinic. Finally, Kovac has to return his sleeve, but ends the season with the quote “He will find her.”
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