‘Sugar’ Season 2 Review: Old-School Noir, New-School Mystery

The first season of Sugar posed a real problem for anyone writing about TV while trying to avoid spoilers. What happens near the end is so revealing—and so strange—that it becomes almost impossible to discuss the show without bringing it up. Still, most people played by the rules, hinting only at “major surprises” and leaving it at that. Now Apple TV+ premieres the second season, and for reasons that are hard to explain, its promotional campaign continues to sidestep that same crucial twist. So it’s only fair to be upfront here: it will be discussed below. It’s hard to imagine anyone diving into Season 2 without having seen Season 1 anyway, so:

Season 1 Spoiler Alert

What initially plays like a full-on homage to 1940s film noir and classic detective fiction takes a wild turn late in the season, when it’s revealed that private investigator John Sugar—played by Colin Farrell—is, in fact, an alien. Yes, literally a being from another planet. The show plants subtle clues throughout: Sugar is odd, slightly off, with habits that don’t quite fit. But even with his voiceover guiding the narrative, the idea is never explicitly addressed—until suddenly it is. Sugar turns out to be part of a group sent to Earth to study humanity, though unlike most of his kind, he chose to stay. Specifically, in Los Angeles.

Obsessed with crime movies and Hollywood lore, Sugar lives and works as a private detective, fully inhabiting the role. Aside from a few understated, vaguely supernatural abilities—and, now, the occasional poetic, interplanetary inflection in his voiceover—he comes across as surprisingly normal. In fact, he’s unusually kind for someone in his line of work. Still, there are elements of his past that haunt him, giving his experiences on Earth an added emotional weight. That said, at least in the setup for Season 2, the sci-fi angle remains secondary. At most, it functions the way it does with Superman: as a lens through which to imagine a character who behaves not as humans are, but as they perhaps should be.

That ethical frustration shapes Sugar’s work as a detective, pushing him toward cases he sees as morally worthwhile and approaching them with a degree of empathy—and even tenderness—that feels rare for the genre. In Season 2, the central case involves the disappearance of Ji Moon, the brother of Danny Moon (Jin Ha), a promising Korean American boxer. Ji had fallen in with local drug gangs, struggled with substance abuse, and was reportedly a troubled figure. As Sugar searches for him, he’s drawn into a web of interconnected worlds—gangs, law enforcement, and beyond—where corruption and political power in California intersect.

Running parallel to the investigation are developments tied to Sugar’s extraterrestrial identity: the lingering anguish over the disappearance of a key figure from his past—an event that partly motivated his decision to become a detective—and hints of a larger connection that may involve a senator and possibly a broader conspiracy. As any self-respecting noir demands, there are corrupt (or seemingly corrupt) cops—Tony Dalton fits neatly into that mold—and enigmatic women in full femme fatale mode, embodied here by Laura Donnelly. To that mix, the show adds a thief-turned-assistant (Sasha Calle), along with smaller but pivotal appearances from Shea Whigham, Raymond Lee, and Laura San Giacomo.

At its core, the series hasn’t changed much; it simply folds that narrative twist into its ongoing structure and keeps moving without drastic reinvention. It’s as if Sugar operates as a dual-track thriller: one thread follows the case at hand, while the other explores the mystery of the detective himself. The tone remains elegant and polished, steeped in references to classic noir, with frequent insertions of clips and imagery from the genre’s cinematic canon. While the central mystery isn’t especially original, it fits comfortably within a lineage that stretches back to The Maltese Falcon and includes landmarks across decades—Chinatown being a particularly relevant touchstone here.

Ultimately, Sugar tells the story of a solitary man who takes on dangerous work as a way of meeting people, experiencing the real world, and forging some kind of connection with it. The key difference from the traditional noir antihero is the nature of that solitude. When those detectives claim to feel alone in the world, it’s metaphorical. For John Sugar, it’s literal.