Hanna Season Two Review

Hanna returned for a second season on Amazon Prime. The second season was able to expand beyond the confines of the being on the run story of the first season.

After breaking into the UTRAX facility at the end of Season One only one UTRAX trainee choose to go on the run with Hanna. The fallout of Hanna’s attack has led to the CIA moving the trainees to a facility in England and move them onto the next phase of training. As the trainees learn their new identities and prepare to become assassins Hanna and Marissa set out to bring down UTRAX.

The first season of Hanna was a frustrating piece of television because it was a remake of the excellent 2011 film of the same name. That season pretty much repeated the same story and themes of the film which made it redundant. The second season was a massive improvement because it was able to escape the shadow of the film and become its own thing.

The twist in the first season was Hanna was not the only survivor of UTRAX’s breeding program and the CIA had been training a lot of girls. The second season expanded on this idea and made the story a lot bigger.

The second season was split into three parts. The first focused on Hanna and Marissa trying to find where UTRAX had moved the girls, the second was about Hanna in The Meadows, and the third was about the girls going on missions. This three-part structure makes the season easy to break down: the first was solid, the second dragged, and the third was really exciting.

The first part of the season showed the different characters and their avenues in the story. Hanna was trying to find out where UTRAX moved the trainees, Marissa was back in the CIA and secretly tries to help Hanna, and the trainees get weaned off their drugs and start to socialise with each other. This part of the series introduces some new characters like Terri Miller (Cherrelle Skeete), a new recruit for the CIA, and she was given the task to create the legends and online profiles and acted as one of their handlers. Anthony Walsh played Leo Granger, the man in charge of the day-to-day running of The Meadows, and Dermot Mulroney was the big bad guy of the series.

Within The Meadows, the audiences got to meet the other trainees. When there were at the faculty in Romania they were dehumanised – the trainees didn’t have names and were given drugs to keep them docile. Sandy (Áine Rose Daly) had been established at the end of Season One and she was showed to be one of the conflicted trainees because she seemed tempted to leave. However, Sandy gets absorbed by the legend that was created for her and she was indoctrinated in the system. Jules (Gianna Kiehl) was introduced in this season and she was shown to be more antagonist because of her abrasive personality, bullied other trainees, and was one of the most willing to take part in UTRAX’s mission. She was easy to hate.

The middle part of the season was the weakest. The fourth and fifth episodes were a drag because it felt repetitive on both an incidental and a wider theme. Both these episodes focus on characters in The Meadows as they get introduced to life and training there and characters trying to convince others to escape. Both episodes even end the same way where someone has to choose between escaping or staying. These episodes also repeat the theme of teenage awakening and rebellion clashing with the trainees’ strict regime. The people running UTRAX try to manipulate any teenage rebellion that happens. This part of the series reminded me of the film Barely Lethal which focused on a group of teens tried to be assassins and one of them escapes so they can live a normal life.

The final three episodes were where the series really steps up. This part of the series sees the girls, including Hanna, going on their first mission and this turns the series into The Bourne Ultimatum with elements of Killing Eve. The girls are sent on a mission to kill people with sensitive information and find a list of people killed by the CIA – it was the same plot as The Bourne Ultimatum. Hanna even had action scenes based around the London Transit Network, like the famous film. Fortunately, The Bourne Ultimatum was a great film, so Hanna lifted from the right sources.

The final three episodes also had plenty of espionage action. The girls had to take up identities as university students and get close to their targets. They had to play a longer game and engineer an opportunity to assassin their target. The show also reveals a wider conspiracy about the CIA assassinating anyone who can reveal information about UTRAX and there was a secret organisation trying to explore them. This was a reserve to what happened in Killing Eve where The Twelve had infiltrated intelligence agencies and killed any threats within those organisations.

The Second Season of Hanna can give people a spy-thriller action and the final three episodes were a thrilling piece of television.