Getty The cast of The Rain on Netflix.
It doesn’t take long to binge watch Netflix’ new Danish-language virus show, The Rain, because there are only eight episodes, and they were released on the site all at once. Although the show has received mixed reviews from viewers and critics, fans are already wondering whether and when there will be a season 2. After all, the final episode set up a cliffhanger and a series of unanswered questions.
The answer: Netflix has not yet announced whether it will stream a second season of The Rain, a 2018 Netflix Original. It’s likely that Netflix is still gauging the series’ fan interest. Season 1 was first available for streaming on May 4, 2018. It’s the first Danish-language program on Netflix.
When would a season 2 of The Rain stream if it’s filmed? “Production for season one began in Denmark and Sweden in June 2-17 before being released in May 2018,” according to UK Express. Thus, if The Rain: Season 2 were filmed before the end of June, it could theoretically be available to stream in spring 2019. Don’t expect a season 2 before that point, if at all, though, as it’s not already in the can.
Warning: There are plot spoilers ahead.
Non-English series on Netflix seem to have found an audience. Another series, The Dark, was renewed, so that means The Rain might have a chance.
Here’s the premise for The Rain. Take The Walking Dead and toss the concept into Scandinavia. Make the Rick Grimes’ character – the leader of the pack, the protagonist – a compilation of two characters: A young woman (Simone, played by Alba August) and the PTSD-weary military veteran, Martin (Mikkel Boe Følsgaard), who is jaded but with a good heart (He’s sort of Rick in reverse; he becomes more empathetic and regains humanity after starting out cynical and jaded). Eliminate the zombies, but keep the concept of a virus wiping out social order (at least in the virus zone). Have the rain deliver it. Maintain TWD’s concept of strangers being tossed together and forming a sense of family in the quest to survive a virus apocalypse (and, remember, families generally forgive a lot more than others do; in the end, Simone’s ragtag family of friends is more loyal and true to her than her real father). As with TWD, the real enemy in The Rain seems to be the people, bad impulses unleashed by societal collapse and heightened by fear. Put Simone and her brother Rasmus (Lucas Lynggaard Tønnesen) in a bunker for years while humanity outside creates the virus, wages war against it (and succumbs to it.) Before an evil group weaponizes it.
In The Rain, though, we get more of a sense of the virus’s sketchy man-made origins. The characters in TWD always seemed terribly incurious about what was going on in the rest of the world, preferring their own surroundings. Although the concept of a virus wiping out most of humankind, and leaving a ragtag band of survivors, doesn’t feel very fresh anymore, the series’ setting in Denmark (and use of subtitles) gives it a unique twist. It’s interesting to see how a country that is not the United States would handle a virus apocalypse.
It’s also interesting that, in The Rain, you get more of a sense of what the survivors are operating within. There are many unanswered questions that a second season could answer. Rasmus is revealed to be resistant to the virus but extremely contagious. He has the power to kill, but the virus can not kill him. Apollon is even more evil than previously thought and has the ability to create more virus-laden rain by seeding clouds with it, thus controlling the world. In the end, the lead characters are on the run, and Apollon is desperate to track down Rasmus, something it should be able to do because others in the group swallowed nanites that allow for satellite tracking. The siblings find their dad, and he disappoints. We still don’t know what exists outside the infection zone. With all of that going on, Netflix certainly set the stage for season 2 if it chooses to deliver.