The official trailer for The Alienist Season 2 promises another dark story about madness

The official trailer for TNT’s The Alienist: Angel of Darkness has been released

After a long wait, TNT’s The Alienist is finally coming back! Daniel Brühl, Luke Evans, and Dakota Fanning are all returning as the trio of investigators determined to hunt down the worst of New York City. Designed as a limited series, the first season is set in mid-1890s New York where a serial killer murdering male child prostitutes is on the loose.

Rather than give it a traditional second season order, TNT ordered a sequel series that will be based on the follow-up novel to The Alienist by Caleb Carr, The Angel of Darkness. This means the characters and previous events are the same and will be acknowledged, but it’ll be a new story and a new case.

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When we left our crime trio last season, their lives were like bleeding wounds left open from ill-sewn stitches. Especially in the case of Dr. Laszlo Kreizler (Brühl) who is reluctant to accept the truth about why he’s so fascinated with the human mind. Dr. Kreizler is the “alienist” on The Alienist, a psychologist who studies mental illnesses. He is a character very much like his work, alienated from the world as he struggles to not only understand the criminal mind but to also share controversial findings at a time when psychology wasn’t accepted.

He’s joined by John Schuyler Moore (Evans), a cartoonist for the New York Times and Sara Howard (Fanning), a young woman who dreams of becoming a detective for the NYPD. Unlike the other members of the crime team, Sara Howard is loosely based on an actual historical figure. Isabella Goodwin, New York’s first female detective

Angel of Darkness by Caleb Carr

The Alienist is the first book in The Kreizler series by Caleb Carr. There are five books in the series, two of which have yet to be published, and they stretch out far beyond the original 1890s setting. By the third novel, the story has reached the modern age of 2016. However, each book maintains a focus on Dr. Kreizler, whether he’s present or not.

The second novel in the series is titled Angel of Darkness and was published in September 1997. Set just a year after the events of the previous novel, Angel of Darkness first opens on a new Sara Howard who has succeeded in her dream of becoming a detective, though not one employed by the NYPD. She is working as a private detective when she asks her old friend, Dr. Kreizler, for help on a case about a missing child. Ana Linares, the infant daughter of a visiting Spanish dignitary that has been kidnapped.

Kreizler and Howard reconvene their old team: Moore, the Isaacson brothers, and Kreizler’s faithful servants Stevie and Cyrus. Their search leads them to an enigmatic woman with a murderous past, who is under the protection of the notorious Hudson Dusters gang. The story is backdropped by the upcoming Spanish-American war of 1898, complications are brought on by the rising tensions between the two nations.

Clarence Darrow

True crime and Leopold and Loeb fans hold on to your seats. There’s a chance that Clarance Darrow will make an appearance this season. For those who don’t know Darrow by name, he is a famous criminal defense lawyer during the 20th century. Made famous for his arguments against the death penalty, his most notable cases are Leopold and Loeb, the Scopes “Monkey” Trial, and the defense of Patrick Eugene Prendergast (the only one of Darrow’s clients to ever be sentenced to death).

One of the defining characteristics of The Alienist, both series and novels, is its use of historical fiction. Though the plots and major characters are all fake, real historical figures make occasional appearances throughout, including Theodore Roosevelt, Paul Kelly, Thomas F. Byrnes, and Jesse Pomeroy.

Unlike in The Alienist, the second book in Carr’s series, The Angel of Darkness, shows the capture and trial of the killer. In Season 1, the murderer is killed before he could be arrested, much to the disappointment of Dr. Kreizler. This time, however, the monster is caught and put on trial. In typical Darrow fashion, the famed lawyer appears the moment a plaintiff in the form of a state utters the words “death penalty” in order to defend the condemned.

If this is the case, Season 2 could take a drastically different approach to crime itself. Instead of focusing on the mind of one disturbed individual, it could take a look at the public’s united mind through a trial.

The Alienist: Angel of Darkness is set to premiere on July 26, 2020 on TNT.