Season 1 of Prime Video’s animated series Undone was a psychological and psychedelic trip for Alma Winograd-Diaz. Alma started the series getting into a car crash while seemingly hallucinating her dead father Jacob, leaving her questioning her sanity. After getting out a coma caused by the accident, Alma found her memory fuzzy and began wondering if her grandmoher’s schizophrenia was somehow affecting her.
Shockingly, Jacob’s presence wasn’t a one-off; he kept appearing to Alma over the course of the season’s eight episodes. However, there was a greater purpose to these visits. By the end of the first season, Alma learned a secret that her father had been keeping. What was Jacob’s secret and how could it affect the existential head trip of Season 2?
Alma’s mind began drifting all over the place when she got out of the hospital. Jacob’s spirit came to his daughter because he wanted her to solve the mystery over his death in a car accident — but it might have been a murder. The key to unlocking everything was for Alma to project her essence through space and time, which Jacob studied as a quantum physicist. Using indigenous people’s MRIs as well as his own family past, Jacob thought he’d cracked the truth about time-travel. Sadly, he suspected Charles — one of his seedy financiers from the American Freedom Corporation — killed him to steal his research for shady purposes.
However, Alma began wondering if the crash was caused Farnaz’s ex-boyfriend. Farnaz was Jacob’s teaching assistant, but through her trips in time, Alma felt like they were also having an illicit affair. She wondered if it might have driven Farnaz’s jealous boyfriend to run them off the road, sending Jacob and Farnaz plummeting into a ravine. When one trip had Alma seeing the Halloween night Jacob died, Undone delivered a nightmarish gut-punch on Moon Knight levels.
Jacob had left Alma on a street trick or treating and rushed to his lab — because her mother Camila (voiced by Constance Marie) was trashing the place. Farnaz called him, scared as heck, because Camila found out how Jacob was experimenting on young Alma’s mind. She wanted him out of both of their lives. Farnaz wanted to expose their project, because she didn’t know Camila didn’t grant permission for the experiments, which meant the academics were breaking the law. Eventually, Jacob calmed Farnaz down, but on the drive home — realizing his personal and professional lives were imploding — he swerved and drove off the cliff to kill both of them.
When Alma revealed the truth to Jacob on the astral plane, he was distraught. He didn’t believe he could be so toxic and selfish. Alma convinced him to go back in time with her, merge with his former self and learn to do the right thing. With a star alignment set to occur at a Mexican pyramid, the change would hopefully be permanent. This is something Alma hoped would give the family a second chance at happiness in Season 2.
However, with her sister Becca unlocking her own time-traveling powers and an ability to jump into her ancestors’ memories from the past, the dynamics on the show have changed. Alma and Becca’s actions could have ripple effects that alter Jacob’s attempt at recalibration. It would be ironic if his daughters messed up his one shot at salvation since Alma was part of his experiments on temporal manipulation, but it’d also feel like Jacob reaping what he sowed. Season 2 may give Jacob a chance to overcome his dark secret — or have it take him down.
Both seasons of Undone are now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
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