Altered Carbon Showrunner Alison Schapker's Favorite Scene Will Surprise You
Before Altered Carbon's cancellation in 2020, the Netflix series had delivered two full seasons of truly thrilling, immersive science fiction. The cyberpunk atmosphere was indebted to Blade Runner and Neuromancer but rarely had genre television been made on this scale before. Armed with a huge budget and creative control, the series was able to fully showcase a grim future world in which human consciousness can be recorded onto a computer disk, and the wealthy are able to escape death by changing into different bodies.
While former freedom fighter Takeshi Kovacs (Joel Kinnaman) was at the heart of a murder mystery in season 1, season 2 saw Kovacs — now in a new body and played by Anthony Mackie — searches for the secrets of his long dormant past. Aided by the artificial intelligence Poe (Chris Conner), Kovacs looks for his long-lost love and grapples with truths about himself that are now hundreds of years old. Though showrunner Alison Schapker had plenty of memorable scenes from which to pick a favorite, her choice may surprise you.
Poe and Kovacs' scene in the finale is the best, according to Altered Carbon's showrunner
When Nerdist asked about her favorite thing that she got to do in season two, Altered Carbon showrunner Alison Schapker said that having Poe and Kovacs at a different place in their relationship was "really exciting." She also named a key scene from the season finale, one that featured Kovacs and Poe alone and in a meditative mood, as a high point. "[T]he scene they do in the finale. Poe's been yearning for two seasons to understand humanity. When they have that talk about what it means to be human, and it means to be broken, that was one of those scenes that we all thought we captured a little magic in a bottle there. I know they enjoyed acting in it, and it was a high point for me," Schapker said.
Indeed, the scene is truly poignant and low-key, highlighting the bond between the two characters and making what comes next even more poignant in an otherwise-explosive finale. Though fans no-doubt hoped for more seasons of Altered Carbon, the payoff of Poe and Kovacs' last conversation still felt deeply satisfying.