If you slept on the first season of Netflix’s Russian Doll, you missed a wonderfully dark and occasionally poignant comedy about a woman named Nadia who discovers she’s stuck in a time loop where she keeps dying but then returning to the night of her birthday party. I highly recommend you give the Natasha Lyonne-starring series a watch over the next two weeks because its second season is on the way, and if this first trailer is any indication, it’s going to make season one look comparatively normal.
That’s impressive, given that in season one not only was Nadia’s fate tied to a stranger named Alan (Charlie Barnett), constantly reliving the day he tried to propose to his girlfriend only to discover she was having an affair, but time itself began to break down as they tried to figure out what was causing them to loop. In season two, it looks like time has much bigger plans in store:
“Time prisoner” indeed! Not only does it look like Nadia gets hurled back into various eras of the past, but maybe through space if that train full of soldiers is any indication. Plus, it seems she still can’t die, which is probably for the best if she needs to fix time, but also there’s gold involved? The season’s official synopsis isn’t particularly elucidating:
“Set four years after Nadia (Natasha Lyonne) and Alan (Charlie Barnett) escaped mortality’s time loop together, season two of Russian Doll will continue to explore existential thematics through an often humorous and sci-fi lens. Discovering a fate even worse than endless death, this season finds Nadia and Alan delving deeper into their pasts through an unexpected time portal located in one of Manhattan’s most notorious locations, the New York City subway. At first they experience this as an ever-expanding, era-spanning, intergenerational adventure, but they soon discover this extraordinary event might be more than they bargained for and, together, must search for a way out.”
Russian Doll also stars Greta Lee, Yul Vazquez, Elizabeth Ashley, and Schitt’s Creek’s Annie Murphy, who’s joining the show for season two. It premieres April 20, so you’ve got two weeks — make ‘em count.