Homecoming season 2, 7 episodes of average length 30 minutes streaming on Amazon Prime since Jun 2020. The story of drama-thriller-little suspense genre.
Story revolves around 4 major characters. First one is Walter Cruz (Stephan James) ex-veteran, who underwent treatment in Homecoming and now lost his memories related to specific events. Audrey Temple (Hong Chau) a receptionist woman,who replaces Ron and Colin Belfast in the Geist company. Leonardo Geist (Chris Cooper) owner of the Geist Company. A central lead character Alex or Jackie (Janelle Monáe), working as crisis manager by profession and Audrey’s girlfriend. Also, along with them other small characters are in important roles like Craig (Alex Karpovsky) employee of Geist and now assistant to Audrey , Francine Bunda (Joan Cusack) a high rank officer in DOD, Lane (Tyler Ritter), Wendy (Mary Holland), Chad (Jimmy Bellinger), Kyle (Christopher Redman), Dr. Zamani (Johnny Sneed), Officer Donna (Audrey Wasilewski) and season 1’s main villain Colin Belfast (Bobby Cannavale) in very small guest appearance. Everybody did great work successfully, to entertain us with good web series.
Web series starts with Jackie recovering from conscious condition in a small floating boat in lonely lake. Jackie lose her identity and past memories. She saw, a man at shore is looking at her. She call him for help, but he runs away. She manage to reach shore and finds one car key there. Police observe her confused and roaming on a nearby road so they take her to hospital for check up. With an old man, she runs away from the hospital and reach a nearby restaurant. Waiter tells her, last night she was in same restaurant with a man.After getting information, she reach his room. In room she finds a photograph of group of army officers photograph and she is one of them. So she think she is retired army officer. But she notices an army unit tattoo on her hand is fake. She get confused.
An old guy hits her, robs her and run away. After waking up she finds that the car keys she has is of a car parked in the parking lot. In the car she get an envelope and tube of Geist Company. Based on this information, she reaches Geist company first and then Audrey’s cabin. She get surprise shocked to see her photograph there. At same time, in Geist company’s celebration party Leonardo Geist delivering a speech, sudden noise stops his speech and a mess happens. During this mess Audrey meets Jackie and kisses her, this moment the story goes in a flashback.
In season 1, Walter meeting Heidi in a restaurant and he doesn’t remember anything about her or who she is. DOD Woman officer calls Geist comapny to inform about the planned Geist’s Homecoming investigation by DOD. Season 1 end like this.
In flashback Walter’s story starts exactly from outside the same restaurant where he meets Heidi. The thoughtful Walter’s car crash on the way to home. After the accident, during check up at the hospital he tells the doctor he had head surgery, but the doctor doesn’t find any surgery mark on Walter’s head. To get clarification about surgery, he visits the veteran assistance office. VA office tells him, they don’t have any information of his surgery available with them. They have information that Walter was treated at a third-party contractor Geist Comapny’s Homecoming facility. But the VA office don’t have details of treatment. After mail to Geist he will get a reply after 12 weeks about treatment.In the VA office angry Walter create trouble, so the police arrests him. Alex as an NGO representative,visits police station to bail him out.
Audrey picks the DOD woman officer’s call informing about the Homecoming’s investigation and she gets the information. Audrey uses this chance to trap Colin.Tells him to accept the complete responsibility of planning and execution of the Homecoming facility.Get in writing that the company don’t have any role in it. She saves company and informs Leonardo Geist.
Leonardo unknown about Homecoming facility or unknown that Colin and Ron ran a program called Homecoming.He fires Colin and Ron and promotes Audrey to Ron’s position in the company. Leonardo comes to know about the medication given to the young retired officers through food at Homecoming, is a special berry’s extract produced in Geist farm. He realizes the bad effects of this, so decides to destroy the berries in farm and stop the production of extract.
But when Audrey goes to DOD office for an investigation questioning, Bunda meets her. Bunda, impressed by Geist’s Homecoming program supports it. She thinks positively about use of medication in Homecoming and provides clean chit to Geist. She want to preserve the berries as DOD property and sell extract globally. For that she tells Audrey to organize a party at Geist facility.
In all this mess, how Alex/Jackie is in the lead role? How receptionist Audrey traps Colin and Ron? Who helps her to replace Ron ? What relation Audrey and Alex have? What Alex do for Audrey? What is Alex’s business? How does Alex know about Walter’s Arrest? Why does she bail him out? How does she lose her memories and identity? Why does Jackie wake up in the boat? Who is the man who run away from her? How Jackie reach the party at Geist? What reply Walter gets from the third-party contractor about treatment? How Bunda help Audrey to save Geist? What Bunda wants to do with berries? Why does Leonardo accept to keep the berries? How Audrey convince Leonardo to sell berry extract to DOD? Finally, Leonardo save berries from going in the wrong hand or wrong use? Who help him? Leonardo able to stop Audrey and Bunda? Jackie gets her memory back? What happens with berries? How all this mess end? All these questions answered in 7 episodes of Homecoming season 2.
You may feel initial one and half episode is arid and lost but slowly the story becomes interesting and keeps tying the threads with first episode. It is a must watch the web series, specially if you like suspense dramas. Audrey, Alex, Leonardo and Walter really made it entertaining and thrilling.
Chetan Nikam 