Carmen Sandiego Season 2 Review

October 4, 2019 at 9:10pm
By Jason Stettner

This is an animated Netflix Original Series that continues the adventure of this title lead. A little time has passed since the first season, and Carmen (Gina Rodriguez) is now focused on her past. That’s a big theme in this season, her discovering and understanding what exactly did happen to her family. It’s an interesting focus, and one that adds depth to the character.

Overall this season was a grand improvement over the original as it developed the back story of key individuals involved with the story while changing the positions of the factions involved. If you’re unfamiliar with Carmen Sandiego, in this iteration she’s a thief that steals from the bad guys. There’s this crime organization called VILE and she’s out to stop them, having grown up in their academy.

Aside from them, there’s another agency called ACME that are the “good” guys and are actively pursuing her as well. All of these groups interact more in this one, and it’s interesting to see the various dynamics at play. Overall, this season aimed to dive into those characters more and increase the stakes moving forward as things began to settle.

While the art style for this is more minimalistic, it really did shine this time around. They had some absolutely gorgeous and iconic landscapes for the character to fulfill missions within.

This really did span the globe, and each of those locations mattered in regards to filling out the back story for the various involved members of her expanding crew. Aside from showcasing some visually appealing areas, they did provide some laughs and educational moments.

With each location, there was some sort of historical fact or for certain items they would give context which is important considering the target audience. That being said, there’s still some good action in this one and that gets amped up a bit. The voice acting was solid here, with a varied selection of unique voices present.

The Conclusion

Carmen Sandiego Season 2 is a big step up from the original season, it achieves this by filling out the characters and the world of this show. I was very surprised by the uptick in quality, and how well the story is developing. There’s a lot of potential for this moving forward, and even more mysteries as we understand just some of the many aspects of Carmen’s family.

It really feels like more of a tease, and there’s a lot of history that is still left to be uncovered. The factions have all evolved which is interesting, and they setup some neat situations for a third season to dive into should that happen. I quite enjoy this series, it’s quite fun and an easy binge to take in. It brings some good educational elements for the target younger audience and I’m sure they’d enjoy this take on the property.

Carmen Sandiego Season 2 Review at Home with Streamed Viewing

Rating Overall: 8.5