Invisible City (Season 2): The Brazilian fantasy series – ‘Invisible City’ (Cidade Invisível) just dropped its second season on Netflix. Previously, it ended on an ambiguous note. Its protagonist, Eric, unearthed several details about his past and its relation to his wife’s death. It made him revisit his childhood traumas and the details he kept at bay for his sanity. After confronting them, he also made a huge sacrifice by letting himself be a vehicle for an evil spirit instead of his daughter. However, eventually, he had to face the brunt of his past, and the evil Curupiro took him away.
The new season proceeds with exploring their family dynamic while shedding light on environmental issues amidst the Amazon rainforests. Let’s dive right into what happens in this new season. Spoilers ahead.
Invisible City (Season 2) Recap:
What happens to Eric after an attack by Curupiro?
After Eric (Marco Pigossi) gets stabbed by the evil entity, Luna (Manuela Dieguez) keeps tracing his location, hoping he is alive. She travels with Ines (Alessandra Negrini) for this search and walks through a wild area of the Amazon rainforest and senses his presence. Ines, however, feels something evil lurking around and stops her from approaching anything in nature without seeking due permission. But Luna is restless. She wants to meet her father and decides to find a way on her own. During her sole quest, she stumbles upon a mysterious woman who promises to fulfill her wish in exchange for hers. Eventually, Luna gets to meet her father through a vision right before his disappearance.
On the other hand, Eric wakes up in the wild, completely naked, and starts running away to find his daughter. He has no recollection of what happened since he was possessed at the time. On his way, he stumbles upon a mining scene and falls into a pool of water at the construction site. That’s when he sees an Indigenous man tied to a rope and two others in an interaction. Soon after, he loses consciousness and wakes up to find out that he is in a hospital.
The district attorney – Telma, who is an Indigenous woman, asks him what his relation is to the mining activities. He was at the scene around the time when a young Indigenous person was murdered. He can only muster up a few details that he briefly saw. When she leaves the room, he sneaks out to look for Luna. A kid from the other room breaks Eric’s handcuffs with his bare teeth and helps him escape. Later, he keeps helping Eric to run away from the police. Ultimately, they reach an abandoned place where the kid asks him to get rid of his curse with his special powers.
The kid attacks him, and the moment he puts his hand on Eric’s chest, Eric gets a vision of Luna’s current location. He follows the trail to reach her on a boat by a nearby lake eventually. That’s when he learns that he has been missing for over two years. Luna takes him back to the boat to Ines. Eric gets worried about why Ines brought Luna there. So, he tells Luna to pack her bags. Then he tells Ines about what happened after the attack. Once again, he saw his late wife, Gabriela (Julia Konrad), who said to him that he still has a mission left.
Ines recalls submitting Eric to the waters since he is a son of the water. So it surprises her to know that he is in sound condition. By the time they can decide their next course of action, Luna is taken away by the witch, who promised her earlier to get her to meet her father. Eric runs to the cabin only to find an owl that screeches at him. Before leaving to find her, Eric reveals to Ines that Bento attacked him – the wolf boy – and that he possesses all of Bento’s powers. Earlier, that kid could focus on a sound from afar to hear conversations and had other superpowers smelling someone’s presence. Eric possesses them now.
Ines tells Eric that he has harmed himself by taking wolf boy’s powers. He must find Bento to meet Luna. With the use of his smelling capabilities, he looks for them. Meanwhile, Telma tries to get to the root cause of the mysterious death at the mining site. On the other hand, Debora – another indigenous woman, tries to push the mining agenda to get hold of gold from the land. She is doing it to fulfill her father’s wishes. However, she is not yet aware that the local Castro family is using and manipulating her into torturing the people from her own community.
Earlier, Castro appointed his man – Danilo, to exploit the forest to get hold of the gold from their land. In the same mining scene that Eric himself had fallen into, Danillo found a creature lurking around. He shoots at it to find a massive snake caught up in his web. That snake eventually turned into an indigenous man. Danillo asks him whether he is the key to Marangatu. He eventually wounds up dead in the same land.
In the present, Debora manages to get hold of Luna and locks her in a cell. Later, Bento is locked in an adjacent cell. They talk with each other to understand their identities and how they are related. He warns her never to trust Debora. Meanwhile, Eric reaches Bento’s family house with a local boy’s help. He asks the parents, both of whom are oblivious to his current location.
Bento’s mother says that she hasn’t seen her son for over a year. Through his vision, Eric sees a heart-breaking story of how Debora took away Bento before. However, once Eric leaves, Bento’s father lets Debora know about Eric. Telma, meanwhile, meets Clarice, who has the authority to make decisions in this matter but shies away due to bureaucracy. Telma calls out her hypocrisy of how she is diverting from the morals she once believed in. Later, she meets the Father, Venancio, in the confessional booth of his church to talk about her guilt. It turns out he was the one who helped Debora take away Bento. So he shares Clarice’s remorse.
On the other hand, Ines finds Matinta – the mysterious witch who took away Luna. Matinta was the one who handled her over to Debora and her men. While Luna & Bento learn about each other, Venancio finds Lazo in a hospital and takes him to their cell. Bento guilt-trips Venancio before he leaves. So, he does not fully lock Bento’s cell. Bento manages to get out and tries to help Luna & Lazo escape as well. By that time, Danilo reaches there and sends Luna & Lazo away. Eric sees the car pass by but cannot catch it. Then he sees a horse with a burning head (The Headless Mule) running toward him.
The horse happens to be Clarice’s entity, who ran away due to her curse. That happens right after she had sex with Venancio. He wants to remove her curse of powers so they can escape the place and move together to a faraway land. That’s why they want to meet Eric, who can help them with it. On the other hand, Bento runs away from Debora’s captivity and returns home. While his mother is delighted to see him and that he does not have his powers anymore, his father still thinks about how it affects his monetary gain. Bento wants to escape from his father’s house for his, his mother’s, and his seven siblings’ safety. However, his mother thinks that is impossible in his father’s presence.
Following his trail of vision, Eric goes to a church to meet Clarice and Venancio. Ines also shows up, and they discuss the plan to go to Marangatu. It’s a mythical land with a lot of gold. Debora is conducting a secret auction after getting a new key (aka Luna) to that place. So, four of them try to invade it and get past the tight security to get Lazo & Luna free, who are currently in Debora’s captivity. Telma also learns about this auction and enters as a waitress. Danilo, who apparently got attacked by the horse, ends up in a hospital. So he can’t help Debora in catching Eric as she wanted.
Bento gets restless by then, seeing that he cannot help his mother since he does not have his powers. He asks Venancio for a way to retrieve them. But Venancio looks at such powers as curses. So he advises against it. Soon after, Debora finds Venancio and ties him up to a rope. While she looks for Eric, Telma finds documents to prove Debora’s guilt. Eric, Clarice, and Ines enter the auction with masks on as per the rules of its secrecy. As a result, Debora cannot trace them. However, she can sense the temperature spikes in people. So, the three of them try not to panic to hide from her. Matina, meanwhile, shows up at the event to get her part of the deal with Debora, or she will poison the girl (Luna) she gave her.
Ines sees Clarice puzzled by her internal turmoil and consoles her. She says that Clarice did not kill Eric the night before since she had pure intentions. Before she reached the level of a judge, Venancio and she had planned to move away. But they stayed to their obligations. However, Ines wants her to see her powers not as a curse but as a gift. That’s when Debora’s men find Clarice and take her away. They keep her tied up in the same room they keep Ignacio.
In her state of helplessness and rage, she decides to take revenge. Next, she creates havoc in the auction in the form of the headless mule. The same mule stands in front of Castro, about to attack him. Meanwhile, Eric manages to reach Luna. But Debora suddenly arrives in the cell. So she needs to fight her. He eventually escapes, but only after a snake bites Luna. Finally, the entire mansion gets burned down. Ines meets Eric outside and tells him that it is not a regular poison and they need to get it treated right then by Jaciana – an old sage from the local community.
The two walk back to the village, hoping to get Luna treated. Bento and Lazo show up and offer their help. By then, Eric had gained hypersensitivity to temperatures as Debora had. It turns out he stole her powers while trying to save Luna from Debora as a venomous snake. Ines notices a wound on Eric’s chest and warns him that he is rotting from the inside for stealing Debora’s powers. Meanwhile, Jaciana relieves Luna from her pain and her curse. Luna notes seeing her mother, Gabriela, while she was unconscious.
Debora, who is hellbent on getting hold of the escaped Luna, catches Telma in disguise and decides to use it in the exchange to find her way to Marangatu. However, when Castro’s men leave them alone, Telma tells Debora about her brother – Honrottu, who died at the mining site. She realizes it after finding a muiraquita in Debora’s room. Debora realizes that she was fed lies all along and made to believe finding gold is her sole ambition. However, she was stolen as a child and manipulated into committing acts of cruelty.
Invisible City (Season 2) Ending Explained:
What happens to Luna & Eric?
Matinta (the witch) reaches Eric and tells him that he can’t save Luna from her destiny. She takes her owl’s form and guides the father-daughter to Marangatu. However, Eric goes insane with every passing moment. With Bento and Debora’s powers supporting his quest, he finds himself incredibly enraged and unable to control himself. Meanwhile, Luna recalls what Gabriela told her in the flashback.
Gabriela gave her necklace to Luna, telling her that it would protect her. But she needs to give it to its rightful owner. So Luna’s purpose, as told by Ines before, was to return to this land to return it. That is why Ines brought Luna to this land in the first place, and that is why Debora kept seeing Luna as the key to Marangatu. So in their struggle to protect the land, Ines puts her faith in Eric, even if he is not sane.
Unfortunately, Eric kills Ines in his delirium and regrets how he let these evil forces vanquish him. He soon catches up with Luna and informs her about it. She gets angry at him for killing the person who protected her during his absence. He laments having done so. However, he now does not want Ines’ death to go in vain and decides to let Luna fulfill her purpose.
Meanwhile, Debora returns to her ancestral home, embraces her roots, and also stands up against Castro and Danilo. They try to reach Marangatu with the help of Lazo while not being aware that he does not have his powers anymore. Meanwhile, Eric goes back to the waters where he had woken up. Luna tells him that other forces are trying to protect the land beside her. He sacrifices himself for the greater good. Through a vision, Luna sees both her parents on the other side of life.
With Eric’s death, Debora, Lazo, and Bento retrieve their powers and fight against the evil forces of Castro. They eventually run away and try to save their faces. Later on, Telma makes a case against the Castro family, who needs to make amends for exploiting the precious land for their greed and harming the environment in irreparable ways. To Castro’s utter surprise, he gets imprisoned for his guilt in these crimes. Before leaving the courtroom, he warns that he will get out within a matter of weeks.
Invisible City (Season 2) Review:
Invisible City creates a fine blend of the past and the present to plead for a sustainable future. Eric was an Environmental officer before getting pulled into this life. So, he regrets not standing up for what he once believed in. Much of his story’s narrative elements eventually make us aware of the sacrifices we will need to make to sustain life for our future generation. The series takes the topic of Amazon rainforest preservation and puts it through the prism of a personal story of a father trying to save his daughter. The aspect of folklore gives it a spin while not losing sight of the pertinence of its message.
However, the narrative shifts rather awkwardly to the aspect of eco-preservation and also regarding Debora’s journey. Her character arc shifts drastically without giving it due time to buy into her sudden change of heart. That jarring shift is also found in the narrative switching to its court hearing, which makes it have an incredibly rushed finale. So much of its central message of environmental preservation is cramped into very little time. That makes it challenging to make process it thoroughly.
So, while the central father-daughter arc is gripping and the supernatural aspect is intriguing, Invisible City season 2 falls short of providing the hard-hitting commentary it sets out to offer.
Also, Read: Azor [2021] Review: A Solid Thriller that Engrosses More than It Thrills
Invisible City (Season 2) Links: IMDb Wikipedia
Invisible City (Season 2) Cast: Marco Pigossi, Alessandra Negrini, Manu Dieguez, Simone Spoladore, Zahy Guajajara
