Altered Carbon season 2 is slightly changing things up when it returns on Netflix. It will have new faces, new stacks, and new sleeves, as well as a significant time jump. However, it will not be an exact adaption of the book series written by Richard K. Morgan.
Stepping in to play the role of Takeshi Kovacs in Altered Carbon season 2 is MCU star Anthony Mackie, who has taken over the role for Joel Kinnaman from the first season. Confirmed to begin production last February in Vancouver, Mackie has been working alongside a few of the cast from season 1, such as Renee Elise Goldsberry, as Kovacs' partner Quellcrist Falconer, and Chris Conner as the AI Poe.
But along with the new lead star also comes new additions to the cast of Altered Carbon season 2. Joining Mackie as the new characters are Dina Shihabi as the AI Dig 301, James Saito as a Yakuza boss hunting down Kovacs, and Torben Liebrecht as special forces unit leader Colonel Carrera who has also been looking for this story's lead character.
The plot of Altered Carbon season 2 will allegedly revolve around Kovacs in a new sleeve and working for a band of mercenaries. Kovacs will apparently discover a portal but he will also be embroiled in another conspiracy.
But former showrunner and now executive producer Laeta Kalogridis stated in an interview with Entertainment Weekly that Altered Carbon season 2 might deviate from Morgan's novels. Kalogridis also said that Altered Carbon season 2 is not going back to Bay City and could follow the huge time jump in the book series.
"The second book involves a worldwide war with nuclear explosions, some space travel, a giant alien dreadnought and an interstellar fight between aliens," she said. "It is prohibitively expensive in scope."
Meanwhile, Netflix is also producing an Altered Carbonanimated series, titled Altered Carbon: Resleeved. It will not have the same characters and storylines as the live-action production.
Altered Carbon takes place in a futuristic time where people don't actually "die" as their memories may be preserved in a device called the stack, which is then implanted in the neck of a sleeve (body). This stack may be download and uploaded to different sleeves thus theoretically allowing humans to live for as long as their stacks are active.
Kovacs' original identity is as a mercenary operative whose stack was downloaded from prison by a billionaire intent on using Kovacs' abilities in the first season. But as that mystery has been solved, Kovacs' stack has transferred to a new sleeve thus setting up the story for Altered Carbon season 2.
