The Mosquito Coast season 2 review: A slow run ends with a terrible finale

The second season of ‘The Mosquito Coast’ sees the Fox family settling down at Casa Roja, where Allie is forced to work for a drug lord who owns the place. The season is now streaming on Apple TV+.

Story

The Fox family heads to Casa Roja on their trawler. On their way, Margot and Allie finally decide to tell the kids the reason they are on the run.

Allie discloses that he illegally accessed a database belonging to the government, and that’s the reason they are running from them. That’s half of the truth they tell the kids.

Margot insists on telling the kids about the bomb blast at the biotech lab, which was orchestrated by her and her acquaintance, Richard Beaumont, but Allie would rather have the kids blame him than their mother.

The Fox family eventually settles down at Isela’s camp. While Allie enjoys his time there, his family doesn’t. Especially Margot, who likes to think that their kids need a proper home and treatment. This place is more like a detention center.

While Margot tries to figure out a way to escape the place, Allie meets their landlord, Guillermo, who forces Allie to work for him and hand over his program ‘Sandpiper’ to him.

Guillermo owns Isela’s camp, and by working for him, Allie and the people of the camp pay the rent.

Amidst all of this, faces from the Fox family’s past in the form of Richard start showing up at Casa Roja, leading Charlie and Dina to learn what really happened back home.

Performances

The lead cast portraying the Fox family retains their performances from the past season. Justin Theroux, as Allie Fox, manages to convince the viewers that he is way too manipulative, as the Fox family says.

Melissa George looks helpless for the most part of the season as Margot Fox. Through her expressions, she depicts Margot’s guilt.

The show tried to instill the idea that Dina has all the qualities Allie has. Logan Polish, who plays Dina Fox, gets to show that side of her character. She slowly and steadily portrays how Dina is learning from her father.

Toward the end, the viewers get to see Dina making her own decisions and making the best use of the resources she has, just like Allie.

For Gabriel Bateman, who plays Charlie Fox, it feels like the show tried to save him for a bigger part. Bateman’s character shows minor developments in the first half and gets some time to shine in the second, but for the character’s stupidest mistakes.

Positives

The second season finally sheds light on the big mystery of the first season. It finally reveals why the Fox family is on the run. Though the backstory is a bit messy, it’s a decent way to kick off the new season.

The show stays true to the development of the lead characters. The viewers get to see them transform over the course of the second season.

Negatives

The season struggles to introduce new additions to the show. Characters like Richard Beaumont and JJ Raban are important, but their introductions are not memorable at all.

One would easily forget JJ Raban, who appears in the premiere of the second season and doesn’t get mentioned for the next two episodes until Margot attempts to call him.

The second season is filled with fillers. The show hardly tries to move forward with its main storyline.

Every new goal the Fox family tries to achieve fails. Over time, it becomes predictable, and the Fox family bounces back to where they were without learning a thing from that experience.

Somehow the show finds a way to circle back to the same conversation of whether the family should follow Allie’s plan or Margot’s plan. Throughout the season, the viewers see the characters confessing their mistakes, only to repeat them again.

Despite failing to introduce many of the characters properly, it brings the prominent ones together for the finale, which seems promising, but the show messes things up by getting rid of them immediately.

Lastly, ‘The Mosquito Coast’ bids adieu to Allie’s character, who doesn’t get a proper farewell at all, even though Allie was such a vital part of the show.

Verdict

At this point, it feels like ‘The Mosquito Coast’ returned with a second season only to reveal why the Fox family is on the run.

Compared to the first season, the second is low on action, takes ages to move its plot forward, and culminates with a rushed end to the Fox family’s adventure.

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Also Read: Why is the Fox family on the run in The Mosquito Coast?