Much like Sugar’s first season, its second installment followed Colin Farrell’s John Sugar, a Los Angeles private investigator, as he pursued a case that led him to some very dark places—while also tracking Sugar’s experiences as an alien living undercover on Earth.
The extraterrestrial reveal was a major twist in season one, explaining things about the main character that didn’t quite add up while also rewriting the entire show’s DNA. Then, after Sugar solved the case of a movie mogul’s missing granddaughter (who was actually the man’s daughter, though it wasn’t as sleazy as that sounds), he had to grapple with his decision to stay behind when the rest of the aliens sharing his “observe and report” mission abruptly departed for home.
It wasn’t their choice, but rather a last resort. Someone had become aware of their clandestine presence and very much wanted them to leave. The question of who was behind this anti-alien push haunts Sugar as season two gets started, though his initial quest is to find the only other ET left on Earth: Henry, a man with information about Sugar’s long-missing and very beloved sister, Djen.
That source becomes a literal dead end in the first few minutes of the season two opener; Sugar finds Henry deeply depressed and dying by his own hand. He perishes before giving Sugar any new information, though he does amplify the worry that Sugar himself will feel the mental anguish of “assimilation,” something everyone from their planet fears.
To keep himself on track, Sugar takes a new case. Once again, chasing a missing person through different layers of Los Angeles uncovers cruelty and horrors, this time with law enforcement and government corruption in the mix. That keeps him plenty busy, but he also pursues an even more personal project: finding out just who was targeting and threatening to expose the aliens on Earth.
He’s accepted that Djen is gone forever; she’s the one missing person he will never find. But at least he can solve this puzzle and find some peace of mind. Or so he thinks.
As the story gets going, Sugar returns to his favorite digs, the luxurious Hotel del Corazon. That’s where he meets Charlotte, an alluring fellow guest whom he falls for despite it being against the “rules,” for obvious reasons. That emotional arc ties into Sugar’s concerns about assimilation and that his closeness with humans has made him change in subtle but worrisome ways. But still, Charlotte is beautiful and cool, and he rolls with it.
In season two, Sugar also acquires a second base of operations, a hilltop house that offers a perfect view of Senator Pavich’s mansion. In season one, fans will recall, Sugar discovered Pavich’s son was mixed up in some very gruesome business that tied into the movie mogul’s case.
The son didn’t survive the season, but his crimes didn’t occur in a vacuum. Still, nobody else who was involved faced any consequences. As Sugar discovered, his alien bosses withheld the evidence in deference to the figure who was threatening to expose them. With the bosses now light-years away, Sugar becomes determined to find out who sold his people out and why, and the senator makes for an obvious starting point.
Sugar’s surveillance operation percolates around the edges of season two as he works his main case. That one reaches a conclusion so satisfying that it shouldn’t really be so shocking when his other investigation goes sideways. But Sugar, a very solid neo-noir mystery show, is here to pull the rug out with its wild twists.
Midway through season one, we learned about Sugar’s secret alien identity. In season two, we never saw him turn fully blue, but his inner conflict over being the ultimate outsider and his terror over losing touch with his real self become important markers for the character. His loneliness is part of the reason why he hooks up with Charlotte, and in the finale we realize how vulnerable he really is.
As it turns out, Charlotte has known the truth about Sugar all along. Her directive was just to “observe and report,” exactly like Sugar’s alien mission, though she developed genuine feelings as part of that.
But, uh… who gave her those orders? The betrayal gets worse. Charlotte works for a certain individual who’s perfected a wondrous, world-changing invention, which Sugar learns all about when he crashes its launch party at Senator Pavich’s house.
At first, he thinks Pavich is the man he needs to talk to. But then, he sees a face he thought he’d never see again. It’s Djen! Djen is alive!
But this version of Djen is not the Djen whose memory he so cherished. This is a woman who has supervillain energy as she tells her brother the grief her absence caused him couldn’t be helped. When it came time for her to fake her disappearance, he’d just arrived on Earth. He didn’t understand this place well enough yet, so there was no place for him in her plans.
“You hadn’t seen what I’d seen,” she says. “Not just the beauty, but the horror, too. The cruelty. Their disregard for the sanctity of nature.”
She explains that she had to overextend her “observe and report” mission because “I couldn’t just stand by and watch this planet die. So I created a technology.”
When their alien bosses pushed back, she did what she thought was necessary. It was Djen who caused her people to be hunted, persecuted, and sometimes killed. It was Djen who made them all leave.
Sugar is aghast at this. He’s also taken aback by her invention, which could very easily be weaponized. It’s a device that can control the weather: make it rain or snow on cue, and even bring out the sun at night.
But he doesn’t get a chance to confront his sister. After Charlotte dumps cinnamon on him—finally, a payoff for all those “Sugar is allergic to cinnamon” teases—he’s losing consciousness when Djen informs him she has to go away again.
“Come find me when you’re ready,” she whispers. “They think this is for them. They have no idea this is for us.”
If there’s a third season of Sugar, which has yet to be announced, we could see Sugar chasing after Djen with the entirely new purpose of protecting the human race from his diabolical sister.
But the way the finale, which is titled “Like Sugar,” ends, there’s a sense that Sugar is now going to focus more on the things he can control, like his own happiness. He reunites with his dog from the first season—a delightful moment—and “Like Sugar” concludes on a surprisingly uplifting note.
Sugar muses in his final voice-over that Earth now at last feels like “home.” And it feels like he means it, even as the very last shot irises in on the communication device he keeps around, just in case any other aliens are planetside and feel like reaching out.
Seasons one and two of Sugar are now streaming on Apple TV.
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