Three years have passed since the premiere of Russian Doll, a film from Leslye Headland and Amy Poehler.
We could use a recap of what happened in Season 1 if we wanted to.
SWEET. BIRTHDAY. BABY. Credit: Netflix
The basic premise of Russian Doll is that a person gets trapped in a time loop. She woke up in the bathroom of the party after she was hit by a car and died on her 36th birthday. She makes it to the next day after surviving the night and falling into an open cellar door.
She dies again and again in increasingly bizarre and disturbing ways. She tries to find out what is happening to drugs by talking to a strange man in the park.
How many ornate bathrooms will Season 2 bring us? Credit: Netflix
In the first half of the season, Nadia is trapped in an elevator that stops before she plummets into free fall. The man next to her is calm.
Hey man, did you get the news? She told him that we were about to die.
He said that it doesn't matter, he dies all the time.
The only two people in the world who seem to remember events from every loop are the two people living separate lives. They realize that they are dying at the same time and try to find a link to their first deaths, when Alan jumped off the roof of a building after being hit by a car.
They meet each other's exes, have sex, fight, and come back for each other. They become friends, and that relationship becomes Russian Doll's most important one.
Protect Ruthie! Credit: Netflix
As she continues through the loop, she and Lenora start to revisit their childhood. In the present, the motherly role is filled by Lenora's friend Ruth, who witnessed the mother and daughter's relationship firsthand.
Lenora was warm and caring with Nadia, but also struggled with child-rearing and after an argument with Ruth shattered various mirrors in their home. Lenora died by suicide after losing her daughter's custody.
Both Ruth and Nadia grapple with grief and Lenora's complex nature decades later. When the time loop has her questioning what kind of person she is and whether she is even alive, she turns to her mother for comfort and answers, neither of which Lenora's memory can provide.
The link to Lenora and years they could've spent together still haunt Nadia, even though her relationship with Alan or Ruthie was more emotionally compelling. In the Season 2 trailer, there is a younger version of Nadia, so the past and present are inextricably linked.
This was definitely a low point. Credit: Netflix
As time becomes meaningless, Nadia starts to notice differences in the loop. She tells Alan that the time is still linear as the loop seems to glitch and fresh fruit is rotten. The duo return to the deli on the night they met and plan to die until they recreate the right circumstances for escape.
With each loop, she finds fewer people at her birthday party, which leads her to believe that they are disappearing because of the damage to time, but by the end of the episode, things seem to be back to normal, except that she and Alan are still trapped.
Besties on a walk <3<> Credit: Netflix
When the first season of the show aired, we said that Alan and Nadia end up in different universes where one of them doesn't recognize the other, but they are still alive and free.
In the Season 2 trailer, Alan and Nadia seem to remember each other and also experience the same time travel on the 6 train in New York City. The trailer says they have unfinished business in the past, but it is not clear if that is the same business as before.
The second season of the Russian Doll will premiere at 3 a.m. On April 20 it will be on the service.
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