‘Altered Carbon’ Renewed for Season 2, Anthony Mackie to Star
Netflix’s epic sci-fi series Altered Carbon has finally been renewed for another season of eight episodes, but this time, a different actor will portray the body that is hosting the consciousness of Takeshi Kovacs, a crack intelligence operative and bloodthirsty mercenary turned private investigator.
In the setting of Altered Carbon, humanity has discovered and has subsequently repurposed a mysterious alien technology that allows people to store their consciousnesses into small chips. With a technological implant, these chips can be inserted into the spines of inert organic bodies that come to life, known as “sleeves”, and as long as the chip remains functional, the mind can still survive even if a body decays; as such, many people go through several sleeves in their unnaturally-long lifetimes, and across genders, ethnicities, and ages. In the first season, Kovacs was portrayed by Joel Kinnaman in the present of Altered Carbon, while he was portrayed by multiple actors in the character’s past. Since he retired that sleeve as part of the season finale, it only makes sense that Kovacs would inevitably be portrayed by a different actor.
Deadline is reporting that Anthony Mackie will be that actor. Since Altered Carbon takes place over many decades and on a multitude of planets, transferring consciousness between various sleeves seems to be an easy way of switching the cast around over the course of the show’s run. Much of the cast of the previous season is not necessarily expected to return, given that many of the actors involved only signed one-year contracts, and Netflix has not revealed if any characters aside from Kovacs will return. However, if the series will go back into the past, then Will Yun Lee or Byron Mann could portray the character again. In the meantime, former Altered Carbon actor Kinnaman is keeping himself busy on the streaming television front with Amazon’s Hanna.
Grant Davis is a freelance writer who has covered entertainment news for more than seven years. His articles have frequently appeared in Star Wars News Net as well as as other entertainment-related websites. As someone who grew up on Star Wars and comic book movies, he’s completely thrilled with the current era of genre entertainment.
