Maxton Hall Season 2 Review: Between Mourning, Power and Destroyed Loves!
Maxton Hall Season 2 Review: From November 7th, all 6 episodes of teen drama are available on Prime Video Maxton Hall Season 2, the second season of the sentimental drama series Teen, or young adult, is based on the trilogy of novels Save Me, Save You, and Save Us by German writer Mona Kasten. In particular Maxton Hall Season 2 is the adaptation of the second novel, Save You (published in Italian by Sperling and Kupfer), of this saga set in England but shot almost exclusively, and very evidently, in Germany and starring an almost entirely German cast, led by the beautiful and very sensual Harriet Herbig-Matten (Ruby Bell) and Damian Hardung (James Beaufort). And it is perhaps the chemistry that runs between the two protagonists, whose performers today are 22 and 27 years old respectively, that has contributed to the extraordinary success of the first season of Maxton Hall, which in 2024 reached the top of the ranking of the most viewed content on Prime in over one hundred and twenty international countries and territories, including Italy. So much so that the third season is already confirmed. But as far as we’re concerned, we liked Maxton Hall Season 2, and it convinced us even less than the first season.
There are few unexplained world phenomena as much as Maxton Hall. A series that starts with paths already deeply followed in the teen drama genre to talk about social disparity, but leaves everything on the surface and proposes quite rejecting protagonists. Yet, on Prime Video, it’s broken record after record. Now, here we are talking about the second season, which tries to improve some aspects. However, it fails miserably. The starting point is always the young adult trilogy Save by Mona Kasten: a third season has already been ordered, and it is possible that it will be the last since it would conclude the original material from which it is taken. The second season of Maxton Hall reopens the doors of the most exclusive college in Europe, but this time, the glossy perfection of the corridors is not enough to hide the emotional cracks of its protagonists. After the sudden death of James Beaufort’s mother, the series completely changes its tone: love, the first light and passionate engine, becomes a question of survival. Ruby Bell, the ordinary girl who has entered the world of the privileged, attempts to hold together the rubble of her life and heart, but the elite of Maxton Hall do not forgive. And James, tormented heir to a powerful and cruel family, discovers that grief can be a heavier legacy than gold.
Maxton Hall Season 2 Story Plot
At the end of the first season, James and his sister Lydia (Sonja Weisser) were belatedly informed by their father, Mortimer (Dutch Fedja van Huêt), that their mother Cordelia (Italian German Clelia Sarto) had died following a stroke. Desperate, James had reached Ruby’s house, where love had definitively blossomed into a night of passion and revelations in Oxford, only to decide to move away so as not to ruin the moment of happiness of the Bell family, who were celebrating Ruby’s admission into the university of his dreams. And here we are in the second season, which starts again from that point. Destroyed by grief, James goes to a party of Elaine Ellington (the one his father would like him to marry, as well as the sister of his friend and teammate Alistair, played by Justus Riesner) and throws himself into alcohol, drugs, and Elaine herself (Eli Riccardi).
Lydia and Ruby find him in those conditions, and Ruby is rightly shocked, but when she finds out about Cordelia’s death, she understands his self-destructive reaction but struggles to forgive him for the betrayal. And so the story between the poor and beautiful model student with a loving family and the rich and beautiful rebellious student with an evil father starts almost all over again. James will have to regain the love and trust of Ruby, who, in the meantime, must organize increasingly important and complicated events as president of the school committee. Lydia, on the other hand, has to decide what to do with her pregnancy and with Professor Sutton (Eidin Jalali). And of course, it is always Mortimer Beaufort who is the super mega villain of history, who has not had enough to marry a woman heir to a historic fashion house to calm down, and indeed is more determined than ever to impose his wickedness to ruin the lives of his children. And, as promised to James from the beginning, Ruby, too.
Maxton Hall Season 2 Review and Analysis
In the review from the first season, we have already underlined how alienating it is to see German people who speak German, go to school in a castle near Hanover, and live in the German surroundings of Potsdam – apart from a few sporadic London shots – pretending to be English and living in England. To mitigate this estrangement, we recommend once again seeing Maxton Hall dubbed into Italian. Because, thanks to the success of the first season, Maxton Hall Season 2 didn’t bother in the slightest to “get English” at least a little, perhaps by making someone eat fish and chips, or by setting a scene in a pub, to give just two examples. Yet we looked from start to finish at Maxton Hall 1 and 2, like millions of other people in the world, pretending not to notice all this, just as we passed over the wrong timing (at first the principal tells Ruby that he has two days to prepare for an event, but before that time comes there are three evenings, four days of school, five moments of crisis and six organizational meetings), secondary characters with schizophrenic personalities (one threatening moment, the next sincerely loyal) and to details about future twists underlined with the phosphorescent orange highlighter since the first season (and here we just say: Percy).
Nonetheless, apart from the scenes showing the perfect bodies of the two protagonists, the only real reason to see, or at least because we have seen, Maxton Hall Season 2 was out of curiosity to know the real motivations of what is in fact the main driving force of the story, namely Mortimer in Beaufort, of which not only is it not known the surname he had before bingoing and getting married to his fellow student Cordelia. But, in fact, not even Maxton Hall Season 2 explains why Mortimer is so stubbornly, wickedly, and cruelly evil in everything he does. In recent years, films and TV series have perhaps exaggerated in describing the traumas and twisted justifications of villains who are no longer really bad, at least in the sense of the classic “villain”. But in Maxton Hall, it exaggerates in the opposite direction. Mortimer is a despicable being who does everything in his boundless power to ruin the lives of those who hinder his already shady plans, starting with his own children. He has no morals, ethics, dignity, or limitations of any kind, but apparently and openly acts only for what he believes is the good of James and (partly) Lydia, his family, and the fashion house of which he is heir by marriage.
The beating heart of the series remains the couple formed by Harriet Herbig-Matten and Damian Hardung. Their chemistry continues to work, and when writing allows them to breathe, they are able to convey sincere emotions. James, in particular, is the character who grows the most: he faces loss, recognizes his own fragility, and attempts to emancipate himself from a father who embodies corrupt power and the absence of empathy. Ruby, on the other hand, undergoes an involution: from a combative and brilliant figure, she becomes more passive, almost a spectator of her own history. It is a choice consistent with the plot, but one that weakens the appeal of the character and reduces his identifying strength. The result is a fragile balance, saved only by the performances of the two main actors.
Mortimer Beaufort is the real driver of this season’s conflict, but also its greater weakness. From a simple paternal obstacle, he becomes a sort of evil divinity who moves the threads of everything, devoid of credible nuances and motivations. He is a ruthless villain, but so extreme that he is often caricatural. His presence oppresses every other narrative line, and the series ends up suffocating under the weight of his power. The other adults –principals, teachers, parents – also appear incapable of acting realistically, accentuating the sense of claustrophobia that dominates the six episodes. In this context, the only refuge remains the female friendship between Ruby and Lydia, which offers a few moments of authenticity in a sea of tension. Narratively, Maxton Hall Season 2 alternates intense moments with phases of pure melodrama. Events follow one another without pauses: a mourning, a breakup, a reconciliation, a new twist. Everything happens too fast to leave room for reflection or the natural evolution of the characters.
This fast-paced pace keeps attention alive, but empties many scenes of emotional weight that could have been more striking if only they had had time to breathe. Even the romantic component, which balanced the dramatic tone in the first season, here dissolves into a chain of misunderstandings and tears, where love seems more like a duty than a feeling. If the writing loses balance, the packaging remains impeccable. The series continues to be one of Europe’s most elegant young adult productions: curated photography, sumptuous settings, sophisticated soundtrack, and impeccable costumes. Each shot communicates exclusivity, but also isolation. Maxton Hall is no longer just a symbol of privilege: it is a golden cage in which dreams are transformed into obsessions. It’s this visual contrast that keeps the series alive, transforming it into a visual guilty pleasure even when the plot wobbles.
The second season of Maxton Hall represents a risky step: abandon lightness to face the pain and consequences of your choices. It is a series that talks about mourning, about social classes, about manipulation and desire, but it does so with an excessive dose of pathos. Despite this, it remains a fascinating product, capable of exciting those who let themselves be carried away by its tragic romanticism. It is the story of two boys who learn that love, by itself, is not enough to save themselves from the world – especially when the world is that of Maxton Hall. At this point, the only hope we have left is that Mortimer will end up like that Walder Frey in Game of Thrones, whose motives were more logical anyway, but to witness the well-deserved end of this very bad Dutch-German who is an Englishman, we will have to – SPOILER – wait for the already confirmed third season. So if you don’t want to be left with a sense of disgust and injustice for a year or two more, maybe it’s best if you put off watching (the finale) of Maxton Hall Season 2 until Maxton Hall 3 comes out.
After the death of the Beaufort matriarch, Cordelia, the future of the company and the family is called into question. They all fall apart, starting with children James (Damian Hardung) and Lydia (Sonja Weißer). Beyond the mourning process, James must deal with going back to school, dividing his time between work, school, and sports commitments, and seeing Ruby Bell (Harriet Herbig-Matten), the girl of humble origins who stole his heart. However, James also broke everyone’s hearts, including friends and teammates, turning in on himself. Lydia, on the other hand, is struggling with the new life that is growing inside her; she remains close to Ruby, trying to console her, also because she is the only one who knows her secret: she is expecting a child with one of the teachers of the prestigious English school. The drama is open.
Anyone looking at Maxton Hall will find ideas and storylines taken liberally from The OC and Gossip Girl: the humble girl who becomes infatuated with the handsome, rich, and damned. Lydia’s history with a teacher is also already seen. In this second cycle of episodes, references are added to One Tree Hill: James and Lydia’s father, Mortimer (Fedja van Huêt), becomes a full-blown villain. A worthy heir of Dan Scott, who must control everyone and take revenge with no holds barred on whoever he thinks wanted to sabotage him, also, starting a real family war worthy of House of the Dragon. However, we must admit that if all these previous titles had not aired, the series would have brought something innovative to the genre of teen drama and young adult. However, those titles exist, and therefore, the Prime Video series is simply an echo. A jumble of stories and characters that we have already learned about over the years, without any truly original elements.
What the second season insists on is the spectacularization of the feelings that the protagonists feel, a mirror of that difficult age: young adults ready for university. The drama to the nth degree, between diabolical twists and ralenties that push on the soundtrack, risks boring and stewing. Unfortunately, the actual evolution does not exist, given that the protagonists fall into the same narrative patterns. Not only that: the secondary characters remain secondary, living only to make the protagonists shine. As if their dramas were more important than those of others. The acting of the young performers, still immature, doesn’t help; except for Sonja Weißer, who gives his Lydia the right melancholic sadness and brings up the discussion of the role of women in patriarchal society; even in this case, however, everything remains only mentioned. Not even the direction of Martin Schreier, who had already worked on the inaugural season, risks making a difference. In short, the few advantages do not solve the many defects of Maxton Hall Season 2, which continues to offer a product that we cannot digest.
Maxton Hall Season 2 Review: The Last Words
The second season of Maxton Hall focuses on drama and luxury, but loses part of the heart that had won over audiences. Between mourning, power, and destroyed loves, there remains an elegant but imperfect guilty pleasure, more disenchanted than romantic. Maxton Hall continues to feature rejecting protagonists. A second season, which, looking at the cover, seems slightly more mature with a single centered, interesting, and non-repelling character – that of Lydia. Leafing through the pages, however, the second chapter turns out to be only superficial and repulsive, like all the protagonists and developments of the story. A serial phenomenon that we really can’t explain to ourselves, except for the new generations who don’t know the previous titles from which it clearly took inspiration.
Cast: Harriet Herbig-Matten, Damian Hardung, Sonja Weißer, Fedja van Huêt, Runa Greiner, Ben Felipe, Andrea Guo, Justus Riesner, Frederic Balonier, Eli Riccardi
Directed: Martin Schreier
Streaming Platform: Prime Video
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3/5 (three stars)
