Altered Carbon

Season 1 is set in Bay City (a renamed San Francisco), a neon-drenched metropolis where the sky belongs to the Methuselahs — the ultra-rich who live for centuries by swapping bodies — and the streets belong to everyone else.

Takeshi Kovacs (Joel Kinnaman), a former Envoy soldier and rebel, is taken from digital storage after 250 years. He is resleeved into a new body by Laurens Bancroft (James Purefoy), a Meth who claims his previous sleeve was murdered and he wants Kovacs to find the killer — since the needlecast backup of his consciousness was cut short before the kill. The deal: solve the case, earn freedom and enough money to disappear.

Kovacs assembles a fractured team. Detective Kristin Ortega (Martha Higareda), a CTAC cop whose corrupt boss killed Kovacs's original Bay City sleeve during a previous incident, distrusts him but is drawn into the mystery. Edgar Poe (Chris Conner), an AI who runs the Hotel Roe — modelled after Edgar Allen Poe's aesthetic — becomes Kovacs's loyal ally and emotional anchor. Vernon (Atoh Essandoh) joins them as a former military man whose daughter's cortical stack was destroyed by a Meth child who suffered no consequences.

The investigation weaves through fight clubs, AI brothels (where customers rent sleeves for pleasure), and a Quellist/Falconer resistance cell that still dreams of revolution. The Mett fleet above the city is loading a satellite called "The Elders" — a weapon that can wipe cortical stacks from orbit.

The killer is revealed to be Reileen Kawahara (Dichennna Lachman), Kovacs's sister from his original life. She was turned into a ruthless corporate operative over centuries by the Protectorate, and she staged Bancroft's murder to draw Kovacs out. The season culminates at the Head in the Clouds — a Meth pleasure palace — where Kawahara is apparently killed. But in a final twist, Bancroft — who was in on the scheme — has the needlecast system tampered with. Kovacs's stack is captured and he spends the next 30 years in a secret Protectorate prison while Bancroft takes the lunar colony escape pod he was promised.

Season 2 picks up 30 years later. Kovacs (now played by Anthony Mackie) is freed from prison by Horashi, a legendary hacker who has been working against the Protectorate. Kovacs is pulled into a brewing rebellion on Harlan's World — a colony planet where the Protectorate's grip is weakening.

A rebel leader named Quellist Falconner (Renée Elise Goldsberry) is leading the uprising. But Quell is not entirely real — she is a construct, an AI reconstruction of the original Quellist (Kovacs's long-lost love), stored on corrupted cortical hardware. She carries Quell's memories but questions whether she is the real person or merely a copy. The Protectorate has been using Elder technology — ancient alien artefacts — to keep population control on Harlan's World, and Quell's rebellion is the only force standing against them.

Kovacs reunites with old allies and confronts old enemies. Trepe (Simonee Misseck), a rebel soldier; Tanaschita (Tanner Kynn), Kovacs's former lover who has since moved on; and Colonel Crow (Ian Tracy), a brutal Protectorate commander who has been torturing and resleeving resisting civilians for decades.

Kawahara is alive (of course — she backed herself up). She reveals that the entire Elder conspiracy goes higher than the Protectorate: the Elders are a race of beings whose technology can control consciousness itself, and the Protectorate has been using their artefacts to maintain immortality — not for everyone, but for the Meths who rule.

The season finale takes place in Elder space — an alien dimension reached through the core of the Elders' technology. Quell chooses to stay behind and reboot the Elder core, destroying the Protectorate's hold on the planet but sacrificing herself in the process — or so it seems. Kovacs wakes in the real world, Quell's body gone, and he walks off into an alien landscape alone — uncertain whether Quell's consciousness survived inside the Elder dimension.