Who needs a strong, vile, intimidating enemy when you have a mother-in-law like Sophie (Melika Foroutan)? The Archduchess of Austria gets on the nerves of Empress Elisabeth of Austria (Devrim Lingnau), and we, too, don't look at her with much sympathy. When Sophie uses cats to stop Elisabeth's daughter from traveling or when she punishes Ludwig (Felix Nölle) for being gay as if he has committed some crime, you feel so much hatred towards the Archduchess that you want to throw something at the screen. In the second season of The Empress (aka, Die Kaiserin), no one looks as repulsive as Sophie. She has that "main villain energy." Sophie towers over other bad guys, thus rendering them ineffective. This is why Napoleon III (Christophe Favre) appears so weak. Nothing about him gives you the impression that you should fear him. In fact, this Napoleon is more of a slimy bastard mainly found in the realm of cheap soap operas and is very unconvincing as a conqueror of kingdoms or a master manipulator who treats others like chess pieces. I laughed when I first saw him, which is the kind of reaction the show doesn't want you to give to him.
The Empress Season 2 could have been much better if it had concentrated solely on the sourness between Elisabeth and Sophie. Their scenes together, filled with bitterness and jealousy, are electrifying. There is more joy in watching Elisabeth gain victory over Sophie's tactics than almost anything that occurs on the screen. Tensions and riots erupt in Lombardy-Venetia, and the anger spreads like wildfire. A love affair due to some secrets is under threat of collapsing. Maximilian (Johannes Nussbaum) wants to prove to his brother Franz (Philip Froissant) that he can handle big responsibilities. The Empress Season 2, with its many plot and character threads (I cannot mention all of them as the studio has provided the press with a spoiler list), is always busy, though not always engaging. It peaks during certain emotional incidents, and one of them genuinely took me by surprise, but the story mostly unfolds without any sense of style. The characters exchange dialogues with each other, and the camera films them conventionally. The lines are dispensed earnestly, yet everything sounds like a chore because you are constantly bombarded with plot expositions that reveal almost nothing new about the people on the screen.
The series seems to be stretching its thin material in an attempt to fill the runtime of this season - a feeling I often get with many shows on Netflix. Season 1 had sex and a spring in its feet. Season 2 is so grim that even the sexual content lacks eroticism and is brief. We don't care about the Lombardy-Venetia issue because this inconvenience is depicted through the troubles faced by two characters who are flat and don't seem to have much of a personal life. When they are beaten up by a soldier, we are meant to take it as an example of what the other citizens experience in their daily lives. When they murder a soldier or carry torches to rebel against the military, their rage is meant to express the rage of other people who share their beliefs. Movies and shows often put us on the side of a group or an ideology through characters who take us into their world, their environment, or their suffering. We are led to identify with these characters so that we can root for their cause and objective. This is precisely what doesn't happen in this series. The two rebels who reveal the problems of Lombardy-Venetia are thin, uninteresting, and generic.
After spending a lot of time going over the same beats and the same points (some of the lines are repeated twice or thrice), the last episode just quickly moves through significant developments, probably to create an atmosphere of urgency. Well, it only looks rushed and jarring. The sudden shift in tone and rhythm throws you off balance - you feel dizzy. In the end, you are left with the thought that Season 2 was made so that there could be Season 3. The first season was apparently the seventh most popular non-English series of 2022, and the second-most watched Netflix series worldwide for two weeks. Season 2, then, merely comes across as an effort to generate more numbers for Netflix.
Final Score- [4.5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times