Orlando Bloom and Cara Delevingne reprise their roles as Philo and Vignette in the second and final season of Carnival Row.
Carnival Row, Prime Video’s lavish “Victorian neo-noir” fantasy series that premiered back in 2019, is coming back for one more season. (I called it “part murder mystery, part fairy tale, and 100 percent wholly original” in my review at the time.) The series was renewed for a second season even before the first season aired, but the pandemic delayed those plans. The streaming platform has now announced that the forthcoming second season, premiering in February, will be its last with the briefest of teasers.
(Spoilers for the first season below.)
As I wrote previously, Carnival Row is based on a feature film script by Travis Beacham (Pacific Rim), written when he was still in film school in North Carolina 17 years ago. He was working in the school library and found himself reading about everything from Celtic mythology to Jack the Ripper. All that fodder fed into a 10-page script for a short film about a constable in neo-Victorian London visiting a faerie brothel where a murder has taken place. His professor suggested the subject was better suited to a full-length feature. The finished script made the first Hollywood Black List in 2005, an annual list of the “most liked” screenplays not yet produced. It took another 14 years to make it into production. Legendary Entertainment ultimately bought the script in 2015 and reimagined it as a series for Amazon Prime.
Orlando Bloom stars as Rycroft “Philo” Philostrate, an orphan of the Burgue, a human city coexisting in a world with other exotic lands that are home to various mystical creatures: faeries (“Pix”), fauns (“Pucks”), trolls (“Trows”), centaurs, werewolves (“Morroks”), and so forth. The races used to live peacefully in their respective regions until war broke out with a mysterious group called The Pact. The humans of the Burgue sided with the fae to protect their homeland from the invaders.
During his military service, Philo met and fell in love with the faerie Vignette Stonemoss (Cara Delevingne). But the lovers were torn apart when the Burgue forces retreated. Knowing Vignette would never leave him willingly, Philo faked his own death so she would evacuate with her fellow fae. Many of them ended up in the Burgue as refugees to escape being murdered by The Pact’s occupying forces. And Philo became a police inspector.
Over the course of S1, Philo worked to solve a string of heinous murders, with anti-immigrant sentiment among humans in the Burgue on the rise. In the end, Philo solved his case, but not before being falsely jailed as a suspect himself—not to mention discovering that he was half-fae. His mother was a Pix singer named Aisling (Erika Starkova) who was reduced to scavenging to survive; she was also the first murder victim. Philo also learned that his biological father was none other than Chancellor Absalom Breakspear (Jared Harris). In the wake of fae uprisings, Absalom’s other son, Jonah (Arty Froushan), created a ghetto for the fae in the season finale, forbidding them from leaving or interacting with humans. Philo chose to join Vignette and the rest of the fae in the ghetto.
The teaser merely shows a tender kiss between Philo and Vignette—apparently in mid-air with Vignette wrapping him in her wings. Then she lets go and he begins to fall back to what looks like a burning Burgue. Beacham has said that at least some of the characters would be venturing beyond the Burgue to broaden the scope of the series in the second season—although the titular Carnival Row neighborhood will still be prominently featured. And it looks like there will be more murders for Philo to investigate. Per the official premise:
In a fantasy world where humans and creatures clash, season two of Carnival Row picks up with former inspector Rycroft Philostrate, a.k.a. Philo (Orlando Bloom), investigating a series of gruesome murders stoking social tension. Vignette Stonemoss (Cara Delevingne) and the Black Raven plot payback for the unjust oppression inflicted by The Burgue’s human leaders, Jonah Breakspear (Arty Froushan) and Sophie Longerbane (Caroline Ford). Tourmaline (Karla Crome) inherits supernatural powers that threaten her fate and the future of The Row. And, after escaping The Burgue and her vengeful brother Ezra (Andrew Gower), Imogen Spurnrose (Tamzin Merchant) and her partner Agreus Astrayon (David Gyasi) encounter a radical new society which upends their plans. With humans and fae folk divided and freedom on the line, each hero will face impossible dilemmas and soul-defining tests in the epic conclusion of Carnival Row.
The second and final season of Carnival Row will premiere on Prime Video on February 17, 2023.
