The new trailer for “The Institute” spells out its greeting one word at a time, laying “Welcome back” over a blue-lit room of reclining chairs and glowing consoles, then “to” over a field of cracked ice, and then the title over a dark hall where children sit in rows, a cheeky way of saying that the place everyone escaped in season one never really closed. MGM+ released the official season two trailer, along with new key art, on Monday, October 5th. The eight-episode second season of the Stephen King adaptation premieres on Sunday, November 8th. What the footage makes plain right away is that this is now a story about a whole network of these places, and about the money that keeps them running.
Luke Ellis (Joe Freeman), Tim Jamieson (Ben Barnes) and Ms. Sigsby (Mary-Louise Parker) are all back, along with Kalisha (Simone Miller), Nicky (Fionn Laird), George (Arlen So), Dr. Hendricks (Robert Joy) and Wendy (Hannah Galway). The newcomer is Nolan Reeves (Alfie Allen), whom MGM+ calls “an eccentric European tech billionaire and one of the Institute’s financial backers with an ambitious agenda all his own,” and this trailer is the first real look at him in the part. The official logline picks up “in the wake of their climactic escape from Dennison,” with Luke and his friends searching “for a way to end the Institute for good.” Meanwhile, the Director “enlists a new ally, tech billionaire Nolan Reeves, to help him rebuild, and Sigsby’s life as a fugitive pushes her to seek a way back ‘in.'” Warning beyond this point there are spoilers for “The Institute” season one.
What the footage makes plain right away is that this is now a story about a whole network of these places, and about the money that keeps them running.”
After the title, the trailer gets the catching up out of the way. Tim, with his hood up and a cap pulled low, sits across from a bearded man in a bar while a voice says the story he is telling “is hard to accept.” When the phrase “accident at an infectious disease lab” comes up, someone answers flatly, “It wasn’t a disease lab.” Over that come shots of the facility in the Maine woods, smoking from above and then folding in on itself in a cloud of gray dust, which is how season one ended, and a voice warns that the Institute “is more powerful than you can possibly imagine.” It is a brisk recap, over in about 20 seconds.
The season’s first argument happens outside a metal building under a steel tower, where Luke turns on Tim. “You said we would get safe and get the story up,” he says. “Well, it’s not working, Tim.” Then he adds, “They killed my family,” and Tim answers, “There are people trying to kill you, too.” That exchange sets up the season’s problem better than the synopsis, because the kids made it out, nobody believes them, and the people who took them are still hunting. Around it, the trailer cuts in a fight between Tim and a man in a reflective safety vest, the kids packing up in a workshop and, later, a handful of them hiding in a freight car marked “Do not load against doors.”
Then it shows what the other side has been doing. Girls sit with sensors stuck to their foreheads under green light, kids in matching yellow shirts fill a wood-paneled lounge, two men look down from a balcony at a group of kids, and a domed control room has three eye logos glowing on its screens. A voice says, “Right now, there are kids going through exactly what we did.” Luke, at a table in a lamp-lit room, says that if they are ever going to get anybody to believe them, “we need real evidence.” A few shots later comes the line that sounds like the season’s plan, and its riskiest idea, all at once: “Maybe the only way to destroy this is from the inside.”
Allen gets the best entrance, as Nolan walks into a stone-walled office where an older man with long gray hair and a goatee sits behind a heavy desk and tells him, “I’d be delighted to have your help.” The trailer never names that man, and MGM+ has not said who plays the Director, but the logline does most of the work. Nolan is then sprawled in an armchair in a white hoodie, and he leans in to say, “Luke Ellis. I want to know his weak spots.” He is not a boardroom villain in a three-piece suit, at least not here, but a guy dressed like he runs a startup. Later he sits knee to knee with Luke, talking softly, as the line “The greatest good for the greatest number” plays. If that is Nolan saying it, and it seems to be, then the Institute’s whole philosophy is now coming from the man who pays for it.
Parker plays Sigsby like someone who has been waiting for an excuse. She walks toward Luke through a snowy street with a small smile, and the line laid over that smile is “Nice to see you again, Luke.” Later she faces him in a dim room as a voice asks whether he is seeing things before they happen, and then someone tells him, “I can help you.” In another shot she is in an FBI windbreaker holding up a badge in a waiting room, which the trailer does not explain, and her cast card has her lighting a cigarette. Tim, meanwhile, turns up in an orange shirt right after a shot of handcuffs closing on a pair of wrists in an orange sleeve, and someone says, “It’s suicide to trust that woman.” King’s novel killed Sigsby off. The show kept her, and on this evidence that was the best decision it made.
Behind the camera nothing has changed. MGM+ credits Jack Bender as director and Benjamin Cavell with the teleplay, and the two executive produce with King, Gary Barber, Sam Sheridan, Ed Redlich and Michael Mahoney. The trailer leans on the names it has, with one card announcing King as executive producer over a building perched on sea cliffs with surf crashing below, and another promising “an executive producer of From”, the MGM+ horror series Bender also directs and produces, which tells you exactly which audience MGM+ thinks it is talking to. The new key art is a cold one, with Barnes, Freeman and Parker stacked over a turreted brick building on a snowy peak while five small figures in white jumpsuits hold hands on a ledge. Allen is nowhere on it, which is a curious choice for the one new face the whole campaign is built around.
Our read is that this is the season where the show finds out what it is without the book, since King’s novel was used up by the end of season one. When MGM+ renewed the series in August of last year, it said “The Institute” ranked as the best premiere ever on the service, so the audience is there, it came for the kids and for Parker, and the trailer gives both plenty of room. The danger is that a tech billionaire with surveillance toys drags the story toward a generic conspiracy thriller, and the red-lit raid with laser sights in the middle of the trailer already looks a bit like that show. What made the first season work was smaller, the kids huddled at a table and Sigsby smiling at exactly the wrong moment, and there is still plenty of that here.
The kids want to tear the place down, the Director wants to rebuild it, and Sigsby wants back in. The eight episodes start on November 8th, and that is when we find out whether going back inside, for Luke or for Sigsby, is the smart move or the last one.
What Do You Think? Is Nolan Reeves the villain this story needed, or is a tech billionaire too familiar a bad guy? Should Luke really try to take the Institute down from the inside? And now that Sigsby wants back in, whose side do you think she ends up on?
See you on the next binge!
