Raising Dion is a Netflix superhero television series based on the 2015 comic book and film by Dennis Liu. The series premiered on October 4, 2019, and stars Alisha Wainwright as Nicole Warren, and Michael B Jordan as Mark Warren – both of whom are parents of a super-powered eight-year-old boy, Dion (Ja’Siah Young). After her husband’s tragic death, Nicole must learn to cope with all the trials and tribulations that come from raising a son with special abilities – an unusually gifted child with powers that include telekinesis, teleportation, invisibility, and healing abilities.
Season 1 of Raising Dion was one of Netflix's most popular titles of 2019 and now the service has finally released Season 2 on February 1, 2022, nearly two years after it was first announced. So whether you've watched the show already or you're new to the world, you'll probably want to revisit how Season 1 ended before you get started with Season 2. Well, we've got you covered.
Throughout Season 1, the series delivers a lot of twists and turns, with plenty of laughs and emotional moments, but nothing compares to the shocking twist in the final two episodes when it was revealed that Dion’s godfather, Pat (Jason Ritter) is the "The Crooked Man"– the mysterious and murderous storm who uses his stormy powers to absorb other super-powered individuals into himself to relieve his own pain.
Having been hit by strange, almost ash-like projectiles during an incident involving a strange aurora, we see him suffering from the same terminal illness that ravages Iceland’s flora and fauna after the incident. He finally sees a way out of his plight after learning about Dion’s healing powers. His mission becomes getting Dion to heal him, even though that could lead to the boy’s death. He eventually gets his chance and tries to heal himself with Dion’s abilities, until he is interrupted by Nicole. Dion and his ‘super team’, including his mother Nicole, his best friend Esperanza, school rival Jonathan, and BIONA’s head Suzanne, defeat Pat by trapping him while in his storm form using a whole bunch of science. Pat/Crooked Man dissipates into the sky, defeated and quite possibly destroyed. The dark energy though – not so much, as we will come to see later.
One of the biggest mysteries of the entire season has been the question of whether Dion’s dad Mark is still alive, part alive, or dead. He was supposedly "killed" in New Orleans by The Crooked Man, but we see his ghostly apparition a few times throughout the series. In the Season’s finale, Episode 9, after Pat’s defeat, all the souls and spirits of the super-powered people that he captured were released and a not-so-ghostly Mark reappears and consoles his son and wife. He’s not alive again, but he’s also not dead.
His warning to Dion and Nicole – "Energy never dies. So, whatever that thing was...it's still out there" – is two-fold. Firstly, Pat may be gone, but the dark energy of The Crooked Man isn’t and that means we haven't seen the last of the stormy villain. Secondly, Mark could also be reassuring his family that his own energy will be out there somewhere, even if they can’t see him or interact with him. This makes sense as Dion then pledges to bring his dad back to full human form with his superpowers. Whether he'll succeed or not is a whole other matter.
The last few minutes of Season 1’s final episode show Nicole preparing to keep Dion safe from any harm that may be heading towards him. We hear her through voiceover telling a sleeping Dion that whatever is coming for him would have to go through her first. Then we are immediately taken back to the farmhouse that was the home of the super-powered Walter Mills (Marc Menchaca), whom Pat killed and absorbed earlier on in the season leaving behind his son, Brayden Mills (Griffin Robert Faulkner).
It's clear that things aren't too good at the farm though – the green field outside is covered in lightning strike marks, indicating a visit from the storm form of The Crooked Man. Inside the house, Brayden’s aunt Joan (Rebecca Harris) is dead on the floor and Brayden steps out of the house – a very familiar storm (the dark energy) surges around him and goes into him. The telepathic Brayden, who is a second-generation powered individual similar to Dion and who can read minds, has now been possessed by none other than the Crooked Man (a.k.a. Pat).
So what can we make of that ending? The fact that we have a “Storm Killer” itself suggests that we haven’t seen the last of the Crooked Man’s energy yet. Remember the black cloud that we see even after Nicole and Dion zap the creature into submission? The black cloud/energy survived that confrontation and instead of dissipating back into the atmosphere, it flies off into the night, potentially looking for another host following Pat’s demise, and Brayden, we now know, is that host.
It gets even more interesting! Long before he was possessed by the black cloud that’s bent on destruction, previous episodes show that Brayden has both a temper and a vendetta against Dion. So, there is every chance that he is out to get Dion, his heroic foil. This means that Brayden may potentially be the looming threat that Nicole is so worried about. And from Season 2's trailer, we know that this is the case and Brayden/The Crooked Kid is going to be causing a whole lot of trouble for our young hero. We can almost surely expect to see an inevitable showdown between Brayden and Dion — and Dion’s mom, of course, who we all know will not sit out of that fight!
Both Season 1 and all eight episodes of Raising Dion Season 2 are currently available for streaming exclusively on Netflix.