Young Royals Season 2 Review: Between Emotions and Responsibility In Netflix Series
Cast: Edvin Ryding, Pernilla August, Malte Gårdinger, Frida Argento, Nikita Uggla, Omar Rudberg, Nathalie Varli, Felicia Truedsson, Mimmi Cyon, Ingela Olsson
Director: Rojda Sekersöz, Kristina Humle, Lisa Farzaneh
Streaming Platform: Netflix
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3.5/5 (three and a half stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
More than a year after the first season aired, the Swedish teen drama Young Royals Season 2 returns with six episodes all available on Netflix starting November 1, 2022. Thanks to the enormous popularity among the youngest, the series created by Lisa Ambjörn, Lars Beckung and Camilla Holter could even get the renewal for a third part and given the results of a finale full of twists, its loyal supporters they may soon rejoice.
In light of the events of the previous episodes, Prince Wilhelm will find himself having to juggle the pain of his brother’s death, the responsibilities that his new position imposes on him and the disappointment at the end of the relationship with Simon and the betrayal of his cousin August. As we will see in our review of Young Royals 2, the Netflix LGBTQ + series continues to explore the life and desires of its protagonist, investigates the emotional consequences of such a turbulent previous year and gives more space to the deepening of the supporting cast.
Young Royals Season 2 Review: The Story
Remained at the forced farewell between Simon (Omar Rudberg) and the prince heiress Wilhelm (Edvin Ryding), forced to silence for the whole summer after the scandal of the videotape that portrayed them in unequivocally intimate attitudes, the doors of the prestigious Hellerska high school reopen their doors for the start of a new semester, sanctioning the return of the students with its usual parties, more or less legitimate, and the well-known brotherhood-style initiation rites to ‘test’ the courage of the newcomers. Among the freshmen also Sara (Frida Argento), winner of a scholarship which, like her brother Simon, makes her a new entry of the Villa by right.
This second season will preserve her awareness of an elitist world so different from hers, bringing her closer to the “perfect” of the August school (Malte Gårdingere), perhaps the most villain figure in the entire series, navigating some contrast with her friend Felice (Nikita Uggla). Determined to take revenge for the diffusion of that inauspicious video, due to the breakup with Simon and the embarrassment of the royal family, Wilhelm instead returns to boarding school to explore his true identity, coming to terms with his desires so contrary to royal traditions, but experiencing first-hand the courage to assert one’s uniqueness. The conflict, however, is always the same: either freedom (sentimental) or duty (sovereign).
Young Royals Season 2 Review and Analysis
The first season of Young Royals possessed the frenzy and intensity of the newly blossomed love between Wilhelm and Simon, as they explore their desires and sexuality within a context completely unknown to the two boys. The new episodes of the series, on the other hand, seem more reflective and eager to investigate the emotional impact of the previous year’s events on Wilhelm’s relationships with Simon, his family, his friends and, above all, with himself. Now that a new semester has begun in Hillerska, the crown prince is grappling with a flurry of hard-to-manage emotions.
He feels anger towards the monarchy and his mother who burden him with responsibility and do not allow him to live as he would like; he ponders revenge against his cousin August, responsible for having spread the offending sex tape online, and tries in every way to undermine its power within the school; he feels pain for the loss of his brother, a trauma that he has not yet had the way and time to process; finally, she suffers from the end of her relationship with Simon as she begins to feel deep jealousy for the relationship he is establishing with Marcus.
As we have already said, the second season of the series also grants more space to the supporting cast, going to deepen the narrative arcs of characters that we had already learned about and who have here the possibility to evolve while remaining recognizable, and introducing fundamental new entries. for new developments in history. We refer, for example, to Sara (Frida Argento), Simon’s younger sister, who will have a prominent role in these new episodes of Young Royals, as she tries to understand who her friends are. But also of Felice (Nikita Uggla), a key component of this season who, while remaining in the role of Wilhelm’s best friend, never falls into her stereotype and manages, indeed, to emerge with her personality. Simon’s friends, Rosh (Beri Gerwise) and Ayub (Inti Zamora Sobrado), on the other hand.
Navigating between the pains of love and new awareness, Young Royals season 2 continues with its teenage drama formula narrated from the ‘anomalous’ point of view of a member of the Crown, perfecting his style strongly adhering to reality, with a so pop cut. and contemporary, borrowed from the Norwegian cousin SKAM, and the frequent use of instant messaging (chats, Instagram stories, Tik-Tok videos) as the preferred means of communication used by the characters.
A technological presence, however, does not in any way prevent the obscuring of the bodily emotions and sentimental fibrillations that govern and upset the souls and hormones of the protagonists, making the various romantic brackets that linger palpable and primary, especially in the broken couple (?) Simon/Wilhelm, on the denied waiting to touch each other or on the never dormant desire despite the monarchical prohibition of being together – a relationship between the two to which the screenplay reserves its most visible attention and care.
By managing to give the right space to each storyline that intertwines well with the others, perhaps given the (wise) targeted choice of narrowing the field to a handful of characters, the arc of the new season unfolds by returning to the same argumentative codes (the social representation of masculinity, camaraderie, hierarchies, the exploration of sexuality, conformism and class differences, gender performativity, mental health), but misleading the trap of repetition and immobility, given some precedents of second seasons struggling to renew themselves, but rather re-adapting them. That is, by reworking the same canonical coming-of-age themes of the previous one, without the risk of stalemate in believing one’s dramaturgical objective.
Young Royals Season 2 Review: The Last Words
Young Royals Season 2, therefore shuffles the cards playing with the same winning rules, once again accompanying the spectator in a ruthless and sumptuous, implacable and majestic environment, as is that of a succession that crushes in the bon ton and the obligation of canonical appearance. the formation of a young boy, not like the others, but who desperately wants to be, to whom the public has now become sweetly fond of. Perhaps precisely because of his possible embodiment of the dreams and needs of an entire generation, always contended between being oneself and adhering to existing canons in order not to disappoint the expectations of the great.
