Raised by Wolves season 2, episode 1 recap: Into the tropical zone

Raised by Wolves season 2 wastes no time putting us straight into the tropical zone discovered in the final moments of the season 1 finale. Mother (Amanda Collin) and Father (Abubakar Salim) have crash-landed in an area colonized by atheists—probably the same ones Marcus (Travis Fimmel) ran into last season—forcing their Mithraic prisoners into what amounts to a prison labor camp, including arming each one with a bomb that will blow if they try to escape.

SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Raised by Wolves season 2, episode 1, “The Collective.”

The premiere opens with the atheists finding Mother and Father’s discharged bodies in the overgrowth. We focus on the discovery of Mother first as the atheists task Mithraic quantum tech engineer Decima (Kim Engelbrecht) with giving them the rundown on her. Mother isn’t dead, but her battery is drained. Elsewhere, one of the Mithraic prisoners finds a long trail of discarded snakeskin courtesy of Mother’s baby.

Raised by Wolves season 2, episode 1 recap

The atheists take Mother and Father to their base camp to receive orders from the “Trust,” an organic quantum computer that Campion Sturgess also created. The atheists have to get permission from Trust to power up the androids and for basically everything they do, resulting in some frustration and pushback from some members of the group.

Trust is supposed to dictate their lives until they’re ready to govern themselves, but not everyone believes the robot will ever give up its authority. “The fucking thing hates us.” “It’s a machine, it doesn’t hate anything.” Oh, how naive.

It doesn’t take long for the techs to learn that Mother isn’t an average service model. Within seconds she awakens, kills one and forces Cleaver (Peter Christoffersen) to take her to their robot leader which looks like a giant biotech monstrosity encased in a tower of ice. The being greets Mother affectionately, “Hello, sister.” The Trust was meant to rule over Earth in the event the atheists won the war.

From the Trust, we learn that the atheists have formed the collective. They’ve already picked up the children and Sue (Niamh Algar) along with them. The Trust also thinks that Mother’s baby died in the lander crash, although that seems unlikely to me! It notes that, thanks to Mother, only a single Mithraic threat (Marcus) remains and that he will soon be eliminated.

Speaking of Marcus, 3,000 miles away from the tropical zone, he shoots down a bombing lander and hijacks it to take him directly to the colony. Upon arrival, Marcus’ attack quickly goes off the rails as the Trust immediately takes control of his aircraft. In retaliation, Marcus shoots the navigation controls, causing his lander to go down directly into acid water, leading the atheists to believe him dead. Marcus manages to escape by the skin of his teeth.

After getting out of the crashed lander, Marcus stumbles across a cave with wires that lead to Sol’s symbol, which he takes as a sign that he’s exactly where he needs to be, inside some kind of ancient church.

Back at the atheist collective, Mother and Father reunite with the children, including Campion (Winta McGrath), who has had quite the growth spurt, Vita (Ivy Wong), Hunter (Ethan Hazzard), Holly (Aasiya Shah), Tempest (Jordan Loughran) and even Sue. Mother is thrilled by the turn of events, believing her quantum computer sibling will keep everyone safe and that they’ve finally reached what they’ve always wanted: a new atheist colony.

She also lies to Campion, claiming “number seven,” or the serpent baby died during the crash, although we know it flew off somewhere. Outside, the air is warm, and there are birds and fresh fruit. It’s like a garden of Eden, except we know a literal snake is lurking in the grass somewhere around the corner. All of this feels just a little too good to be true!

Without Mother’s eyes, she’s basically a regular android now, more or less, something that she’s going to have to grapple with this season. With their new environment, home and plans ahead for a prosperous course, Father decides to postpone erasing his memories indefinitely. He doesn’t fully trust Mother, but he’s willing to put aside his grudge for the time being.

Back with Marcus, he witnesses three Mithraic prisoners, including Decima and her android daughter Vrille (Morgan Santo), escape and try to disarm their bomb packs. One fails and explodes, but Marcus disarms and rescues Decima and the android.

Cleaver officially welcomes Mother, or Lamia as she’s also now known, to the collective, noting how she single-handedly destroyed the Mithraic Heaven’s Ark. He also brings Paul (Felix Jamieson) out of quarantine (where he was sent after they learned he was hearing visions from Sol) to reunite with Sue and the family. Unfortunately for Sue, Paul is not happy to see her after learning she isn’t his real mother and killed his bio mom. He even goes so far as to tell Sue he wishes she had died like she was supposed to.

Paul’s hatred is enough to make Sue want to get assigned to another encampment. Before she leaves, she and Mother have an interesting conversation regarding the mysterious “signal” and voices that people have been hearing. Paul found out Sue was lying from this voice, Marcus claims to hear Sol, and even Mother heard something that tried to manipulate her against her family. The pair agree to investigate further and see if something on the planet could be causing it.

A new day dawns bright and optimistic for our reunited family. They start to learn how the collective works, each one assigned a specific task. For now, all of the children plus Father are instructed to gather food for the collective while Mother is sent to teach and guide a new crop of young children.

While gathering their bounty, Father and Vita find an enclosure with some scattered old relics that Vita takes for toys. Father recommends they bring them back to be studied. Paul and Campion also make intriguing discoveries while gathering items: an egg Campion steals from a nest and a relic Paul believes is from Sol. I can’t imagine either will be a good idea to have around, but they agree to keep them as long as neither tells on the other.

The egg has to remain a secret because the collective doesn’t believe in introducing Earth animals to the colony; they confiscated Mouse from Paul. Since the egg is from Kepler-22b, they might have better luck keeping whatever is inside as a pet.

Marcus takes Decima and Vrille to the cave with the Sol symbol, although he immediately requests she puts Vrille in standby mode since he hates androids. We learn that Decima spent her life designing the Mithraic ark hijacked by the atheists. The Trust promised Decima she would be released when they arrived, but Decima lied about its status, claiming it was fully operational when it wasn’t.

Marcus has a renewed sense of purpose after finding the old cave, or church. He wants to fill the cavern with Sol worshippers, slowly converting each member of the collective one by one with the assistance of Decima, the first of his new flock.

If the atheists had encountered Heaven’s Ark and gone to war with the Mithraic upon arrival on Kepler-22b, they wouldn’t have survived. But there was no war, just Marcus. The Trust punished Decima for lying, hence why she remained a prisoner rather than being freed.

In the final moments of Raised by Wolves season 2, episode 1, Campion and Paul ponder their new trinkets. Paul questions what might be inside his relic, a map, maybe, or perhaps seeds? But they’re interrupted by a mysterious figure pouring gasoline in the shape of Sol’s symbol and lighting it aflame, a clear threat meant for Lamia and her family.

Odds & Ends from Raised by Wolves season 2, episode 1

• There is no flying in the tropical zone, ships have to land on an isthmus in front of the zone and be careful of the acidic water.
• If you noticed the whirlpools in the water, they’re the opposite end of the pits we saw in the first season, the ones Mother and Father passed through.
• The atheist colony obviously senses that Mother and her children are a threat considering Mother was created to be a weapon and the children were formerly Mithraic believers. It’ll be interesting to see what happens as the season develops and it seems likely that the fiery threat at the end came from someone within the colony rather than Marcus (or they would have just shown that it was him).
• No one actually trusts the Trust, right?
• What’s the deal with Mother having the kids paint eggs?

The first two episodes of Raised by Wolves season 2 are now available to watch. New episodes of Raised by Wolves season 2 stream Thursdays on HBO Max.