Takeshi Kovacs is a chameleon of sorts. But in the world of Altered Carbon, that doesn't make him unique at all. In fact, just about every human born (within the Protectorate, at least) has this ability, because the technology exists to upload a person's consciousness as digital data which can then be downloaded into a variety of bodies, or Sleeves. Trippy stuff.

If you had trouble following that, you're gonna have a tough time keeping up with Altered Carbon Season 2, which just arrived on Netflix today. That's okay, we've got you covered. We're recapping the events of Season 1, along with some terminology to explain why Will Yun Lee, Joel Kinnaman, and Anthony Mackie (and others) can all play Kovacs. It's still pretty complicated stuff. Luckily, Netflix has a handy video recap before you jump into Season 2. Check it out below or watch the auto-play when you head over to the title's launch page itself:

The past is haunting you. Anthony Mackie is Takeshi Kovacs in Season 2 of Altered Carbon, streaming February 27. Get ready to watch with this recap of Season 1!

Our quick recap of Season 1 follows below, after a handy terminology guide:

  • Stack, or Cortical Stack - A device (of extra-terrestrial origin) implanted in the spinal column that houses the "true" self, consciousness, or Digital Human Freight (D.H.F.). This essence of what it means to be a human is stored digitally in what are essentially server banks, which can then be downloaded from or uploaded into Stacks. Materialists can think of this as the brain while the more spiritual among us can think of it as the soul, consciousness, or mind.
  • Sleeve - If the Stack is the mind, the Sleeve is the body. The D.H.F. can be downloaded into a body, making a person's physical appearance both highly variable and customizable while also making the flesh more "disposable", since a consciousness can be "resleeved."
  • Synth - A synthetic sleeve
  • Needlecasting - The process of transmitting a Stack consciousness into a Sleeve; the original purpose of this technology was to facilitate interstellar travel.
  • Real Death - If your stack is destroyed--or "slagged"--you die, unless you happen to be a Meth...
  • Meths - Derived from the Biblical figure Methuselah, these are the ultra-wealthy who can afford to basically live forever by using a potentially endless line of cloned sleeves. Meths can also afford a duplicate remote stack, a D.H.F. backup that serves as protection against "real death"
  • Envoy - "Super-soldiers" with varying allegiances, perceived as freedom fighters by some and terrorists by others; these outstanding fighters and skilled tech-users were developed long ago. The Envoys, including Takeshi Kovacs, were led by Quellcrist Falconer.
  • Dipper - Needlecast hackers who sell memories on the black market
  • Wedge - A mercenary organization

Season 1

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Image via Netflix

Deep breath, because here comes a very brief recap:

In Season 1, Takeshi Kovacs, a convicted criminal, wakes up in a new body (Kinnaman) after 250 years by the uber-wealthy Laurens Bancroft in order to solve the rich man's murder. Offered immense wealth and, more importantly, freedom, Kovacs eventually takes the case. He checks into a Gothic hotel run by Poe (Chris Conner) a holographic artificial intelligence.

Meanwhile, Lieutenant Kristin Ortega (Martha Higareda), keeps track of Kovacs during his investigation, after having interrogated him earlier. Kovacs accepts an invitation to the Bancroft mansion but is then abducted and tortured, ultimately fighting back when he remembers his Envoy training. Kovacs also learns that his current sleeve is Ortega's former lover and a disgraced cop.

He and Ortega head to Fightdrome to interrogate Carnage, a gangster of sorts who runs an underground cage-fighting ring. Kovacs comes face to face with his old sleeve here, though it's stored in a tube for use as a gladiator sleeve. Later, Ortega is badly wounded in a fight, leading to her getting a mechanical prosthetic arm. After Kovacs learns that Laurens' son Isaac might have been responsible for the murder, he and Ortega are abducted and forced to fight in Carnage's arena. Luckily, Kovacs' sister Reileen Kawahara arrives to save them.

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Image via Netflix

Through a series of flashbacks, Kovacs remembers his past with his sister, his training under Quell, their missions, and more details of his former life. In the present, he remembers that Quell is the revolutionary leader and original creator of the Stacks, Nadia Makita, but also learns that Reileen is not who she appears to be. She betrayed the Envoys in the past, using wealth provided to her by the Protectorate to become a powerful Meth and crime lord, employing the same people who attacked Ortega and tortured Kovacs. She's multi-sleeved, appearing as Rei, Hemingway, and Clarissa Severin, depending on just whom she is addressing. Kovacs' learns that Rei's desire to achieve immortality led her to sabotage the Envoys shuttle, temporarily killing Quell and her dream to take down the Protectorate to make the wealthy and powerful mortal once again, even as she professes to do all of this to save Kovacs as well.

While Ortega acts on Kovacs' orders to figure out how to take out Rei, Kovacs himself goes to recruit the services of the incarcerated dipper, Ava Elliott. Together, they work to develop a virus that will take out all of Rei's clones. At the same time, those clones awake and attack Ortega after she infiltrates their storage location; Rei then manages to back herself up before taking over Ortega's sleeve. Kovacs realizes this too late to save Ortega's family from Rei's hitman, but he takes the opportunity to enact his plan to spread the newly created virus through her remaining clones.

It's revealed that Rei managed to get Miriam to drug her husband Laurens with Stallion, a powerful chemical that makes men become erratic, uninhibited, and exceptionally violent. This led to Laurens killing a prostitute and then raping Ava's daughter, Lizzie Elliot, impregnating her. Laurens' wife Miriam, whom Lizzie ran into while seeking help, killed Lizzie and dumped her sleeve, brainwashing her so that she became stuck in a VR trauma loop until she can be re-sleeved into a new body. With the past realization that Laurens caused the "real death" of Lena Rentang, he destroyed his own stack just in time to prevent the awful memory from being saved to his D.H.F. back-up.

And all this violence was to prevent the ratification of Proposition 653, which would have allowed murder victims to be resleeved in order to testify against their killers. Rei, as a crime lord who made money by programming religious coding into the murder victims of her clients so that they couldn't be resleeved, manipulated Bancroft in order to defeat this law. The plan backfired and was exposed, leading to the Protectorate passing the proposition and the murdered prostitutes being resleeved to participate in the trial.

Kovacs' plan to spread the virus through Rei's clones works, but it also affects his own clone and the A.I. Poe. The original Kovacs manages to kill Rei before the floating pleasure house Head in the Clouds crashes into the bay after an extended battle sequence. Ortega and the police arrest Miriam Bancroft and the Meths at Suntouch House. Upon learning of this truth, the current Laurens is still in denial but turns himself in and passes his estate to the philanthropic Isaac.

Later, Kovacs bails out Ava and returns her proper sleeve, while Lizzie transfers into a Synth and questions her new reality. Ortega and Takeshi say their goodbyes as Kovacs goes off in search of Quell...