TV Review: Kingdom Season Two (2020)

Kingdom Season Two (2020) written by Eun-hee Kim, directed by Seong-hun Kim and In-je Park

See my review of Season One...beware, spoilers for the first season are naturally part of the review below!


The Crown Prince (Ji-Hoon Ju) has to lead his forces as the undead hordes become active during the day. He fights out of one fortification and then heads to the capital to assert his birthright and to stop the zombie outbreak from breaking out further. He keeps his friends, including his trusted bodyguard (Sang-ho Kim), with him even though one of them is a traitor. The doctor (Doona Bae) leaves the group when she finds a resurrection plant and struggles to find a cure.

Meanwhile, the Queen (Hye-jun Kim) continues her plot to keep the throne for herself and her clan, though she is more in it for herself. The clan just does the dirty work for her. The big shocking revelation, that she's faking the pregnancy (she was originally pregnant but lost the child in utero), explains why a lot of pregnant noble women have been gathered to her family's home. It's not so much to keep them safe as it is to wait for a male child to be born who can be subbed in as the new legitimate heir to the throne. Unfortunately, there's been a string of female infants, leading to murders. One of the women escapes and tells about the crimes, though she doesn't know about the Queen's situation. Some officials investigate, putting the Queen's status in jeopardy. She does some political maneuvering to keep herself in control.

Like season one, the show does a masterful job blending the royal succession drama and the zombie action and mayhem. The political situation is fascinating and the Crown Prince is very much an ideal hero and leader. He works hard to save the people, even putting his own life in jeopardy. The Queen is cool and calculating, just the sort of villain that is highly effective and a sharp contrast to the Crown Prince. The fights are exciting and well-filmed, with the gore being on the mild end of the zombie-genre spectrum.

I only had two problems. First, they give more details about how the zombie infection works, which invalidates a lot of the behaviors of the zombies beforehand. This problem is common to many zombie stories--technical details are almost never convincing. The other problem is the series wraps up the royal succession story very well but then tags on some further content that will let them make a third season which looks a lot less interesting. Maybe they can pull it off. I will give it a try if and when it comes out.

Recommended.

This is currently available on Netflix (as of June 2020).