Falconer also happens to be the original creator of the stacks and sleeves. Season 2 jumps 30 years into the future and now Kovacs (a new sleeve brought to life by Avengers alumni Anthony Mackie) is determined to find his lost love and revolutionary leader Quellcrist Falconer ( Renee Elise Goldsberry). He's also got to figure out clues to his own past involving his sister Reileen Kawahara ( Dichen Lachman). In season 1, the consciousness of mercenary Takeshi Kovacs (played by Joel Kinnaman for now) is downloaded into a new body, with the task of finding the killer of a murdered Meth. Those are the basics to Altered Carbon, but even that can be hard to follow.Īctor Joel Kinnaman as mercenary Takeshi Kovacs in season one of Altered Carbon. Some people decide to swap genders and can split their consciousness into two sleeves rather than one. This body-swapping explores the idea of identity on multiple levels. Only the wealthy, known as Meths, can afford stacks and the new human sleeves to place them in.

A person's consciousness can live forever as long as it moves from sleeve to sleeve. Stacks can also be transplanted into new human bodies called sleeves. A person's memories and consciousness can be stored in an alien-engineered disk called a cortical stack, which is then implanted into the back of a person's neck. The world of Altered Carbon ( based on the novel of the same name) is a mix of weird science and personal identity issues. I have notes on random sheets of paper I scribbled while watching, just to stay on top of who's who and what they were doing in the show. Whenever I would attempt to explain Altered Carbon to friends, they would respond with perplexed expressions as if to say, 'This sounds like a lot of work.' They're not wrong.

So when news hit on Wednesday that Netflix canceled the mind-bending sci-fi thriller Altered Carbon, I was sad, but not shocked.

Heck, I'm still not over Firefly never getting a second season. As a fan of weird and wacky sci-fi TV shows, I'm used to having my hopes dashed by sudden network cancelations.

Altered carbon the book