Diksha Sundriyal
Netflix’s ‘The Gift’ returns with a second season that offers more intrigue and excitement. It expands the scope of its story. With a new world in its existence, the plot devices and the characters are suddenly doubled, and though we are familiar with their characters, there is also the prospect of adding more nuance to them which is what the show does this time around. It keeps building on the things that give more weight to the story and never halts to let the audience breathe and take a moment to understand all that is being unloaded on them.
The Gift Season 2 Recap
The second season picks up after the finale of the first. In the caves of Gobekli Tepe, Atiye uses her powers to bring back Cansu, who had been killed by Serdar. However, in doing so, she crosses over to the other world where Cansu is alive but as Elif, Erhan’s sister. It turns out that the backstories of almost every character have changed here, and no one recognizes Atiye because she doesn’t exist in this world. She finds out that Erhan and Elif’s father didn’t die in an accident, which is why Elif was never adopted by Mustafa. Rather, their father simply went missing one day and Serdar adopted the siblings, raising him as their own. He supported Erhan in all his pursuits, which it turns out is to excavate the site of Gobekli Tepe. The temple has not been found yet, which poses a problem for Atiye because, without it, she can’t find her way back home.
The one thing in her favor is that her mother remembers her. She is more accepting of their powers and legacy in this world, as opposed to how she had been in the original. She tries to stop the excavation at the site and talks about the arrival of her daughter, which leads people to believe that she is crazy because, in this world, she never got married and doesn’t technically have a daughter. Another person who remembers Atiye is Serdar. He is still working for the secret organization, the true nature and purpose of which is not fully revealed to the audience. However, as opposed to the extremely harsh and cold-blooded Serdar of the first season, this one seems a bit vulnerable and hence more human.
To find the way back, Atiye has to convince the Erhan of this world that they are connected to each other. She needs him because according to the prophecy, he is the one to find the door and she is the one who opens it. Things also become more urgent for her when she discovers that she is pregnant. The situation becomes tricky here because in this world something happened years ago which led to a horrific state of affairs. It turns out that pregnant women are dying, as a result of which, no babies have been born in the past few years. The staggering mortality rate has led people to become wary of getting pregnant and dying in the process. With no new births, an inevitable deadline has been placed on the world and there seems to be no way out of it. Atiye’s rush to leave this world increases because she can’t risk staying here and losing her child as well as her own life. However, it is soon revealed to her that her fate is tied to this world as well and she might be the only one who can save it from destruction.
The Gift Season 2 Review
What makes ‘The Gift’ an interesting watch is how it balances the mystical and the scientific factors of the story. On one side we have magical healing, a gift passed down the generations and a love story that extends back to the beginning of time. On the other hand, there is the archeological setting, diving into the obscure languages of the past, of parallel worlds, and the non-linear nature of time. While it seems a hard, if not an impossible, task to merge these worlds into one, ‘The Gift’ maneuvers it rather well.
However, as it dives deeper into its world-building and adds more layers to the story, we start to wonder if it will make things too thick for itself and get clumsy as a result of it. Though the show mostly escapes the brunt of making things too complicated for its own good, it also seems to struggle with keeping its characters up to the task of handling everything. The second season overdoes the mystical bits, where Atiye and Serap seem too carefree sometimes. Contrasting with the upheaval that the lives of the rest of the characters go through, the mother-daughter duo seems too cool, which can feel somewhat out of sorts.
The second season finds Atiye finding her way back and exploring more of her powers, and there isn’t much character development there, considering that she’d had a lot of it over the course of the first season. This time around, the other characters get the time to shine, especially the negative ones. People like Serdar get an added dimension where the villainy is balanced with the vulnerability and the helplessness that comes with saving their loved ones who are already doomed. The same, however, can’t be said about the female characters. Cansu gets a makeover as Elif, but we find her back where she was in the first season and she barely makes it out of that loop. There is also the thing about how everything seems too convenient for Atiye. Any real hurdle experienced by her comes in the last two episodes, and even then, it doesn’t really affect her as much. It is little things like this that irk you about the show. As for the thickening mystery, the third season has a lot to look forward to.
Read More: Where Was The Gift Filmed?
