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[Warning: The following contains spoilers for Altered Carbon Season 2. Read at your own risk!]
Altered CarbonSeason 2 ended on some pretty shocking cliffhangers, but the most pressing question is the one we all knew was coming: Who will play Takeshi Kovacs in Season 3?
Joel Kinnaman played the leading role of The Last Envoy in the cyberpunk drama's first season, with Anthony Mackie taking over for Season 2. Meanwhile, Will Yun Lee appeared in both seasons as Kovacs' birth sleeve, initially just in flashbacks but then as a double-sleeved version of the mercenary. Altered Carbon Season 2 ended with Mackie's Kovacs deciding to sacrifice himself in order to defeat the Elder, leaving Lee's Kovacs as the sole surviving version of the soldier. But does that mean that Will Yun Lee will play the leading Kovacs in a potential third season?
"OK, I don't want to answer that specifically," showrunner Alison Schapker told TV Guide. "I just want to say I have a ton of ideas for that. And that to me, Altered Carbon and Will are always intertwined in my mind. So I do think no matter what, the Kovacs played by Will at the end of Season 2 has a huge role to play, god willing. Algorithmic gods willing."
Altered Carbon Boss Explains All Those Season 2 Twists
As for what Schapker means by that, the answer may be in the stack that Poe (Chris Conner) had secreted away while he was rebooting. During our interview with Schapker, she revealed that the stack had "the consciousness of Kovacs digitized on it," meaning we might once again get a season with dual Kovacses. Season 1 saw Kovacs double-sleeved and working together (with Kinnaman playing both roles) and Season 2 put a twist on that by having Mackie's Kovacs and Lee's Kovacs initially positioned as adversaries. Would a third season of double-sleeveing Kovacs feel repetitive? Maybe. But would we accept any plot device that keeps Lee's Kovacs around without the show having to deviate from its new star each season formula? Most definitely.
Altered Carbon Season 2 is available to stream on Netflix.
