The Final Push For Season 2
In the aftermath of the meteors hitting the beach, the season 1 finale of The Stranded begins with the kids scrambling back to school where they struggle to find answers to what’s happened. However, when the real Professor Lin is brought into school, the kids panic in the wake of the impostor standing before them until she hurries away outside. Kraam follows her though and after catching up with her, she asks how he survived the tsunami while his adoptive father died. Before he can get answers however, the mob arrive. Another soundwave sees Kraam hallucinate and see his Mother with her baby before Kraam wakes up to find Professor Lin talking to him on the cliff edge, telling him to jump to get answers. When Kraam awakens again, he finds himself hiding out with Krit who asks about the Professor Lin situation. Meanwhile Anan rallies the troops and prepares to go on the hunt for, they assume, the demon that has possessed the fake Professor Lin. They set up guard duties outside while Anan stumbles upon Kraam’s drawings, believing him to be in collusion with Professor Lin. Ying and Arisa reconvene at the school before deciding to get the generator running. Ying gets back on the bike again and begins pedaling as the projector switches on, distracting the guards. As they head off to investigate, Kay stays on guard duty as May approaches, desperate to speak to Kraam. After breaking him free, they head down to the shore while the guards rush after them. Their wooden raft lies waiting for them but unfortunately Anan intersects them and burns the boat. In the scramble, Anan grabs May and holds her up at knife-point, threatening Kraam. As they fight, he lets slip that May is pregnant before they manage to get away, courtesy of May firing the gun at his arm. In the woods, a thick fog descends over them, causing Kraam and May to become separated. It’s here Kraam finds himself face to face with Professor Lin. He asks about the earlier vision before following her further into the jungle and to the cave. Once there, she instructs him to dive into the water, where he holds his breath and begins swimming deeper and deeper underground. Once there, the rocks behind him collapse, leaving him scrambling for safety. Unfortunately he drowns. However, his adoptive Father grabs him from the water and it’s here we see him as a baby, taken out from the pool. A brief montage then follows as we see them through the years, leading up to the night of the tsunami. Ascending from the water properly, he finds a neon staircase ascending up to a mysterious door. Back at the camp, Jan asks them to hand May over but Anan refuses, telling everyone that she’s pregnant and riling the mob up to go after Kraam. While May struggles to break free from her restraints, Anan tells the students to be ready to abandon hope of ever leaving and instead make the school their home. As he delivers this speech, Kraam walks through a set of strange, golden doors and finds himself back in the jungle. That jungle leads to a road where he finds a bag with armour reading “dumbass” on. After being fired at by a group of armoured kids, Kraam heads out and finds himself on a cliff edge looking out at Thailand. He happens to be at the highest point of the country and it’s here he sees the tsunami has swallowed up the mainland. With guns pointed at his head, Kraam holds his hands up only to find one of the boys infront of him happens to be Joey. With no definitive answers and yet more questions piled onto the plate by the end, The Stranded leaves things frustratingly open here, prepping for a second season. Does this mean the cave is effectively a time travel device? Or is this an alternate universe? If it is an alternate universe, did the tsunami affect that world too? The Stranded really doesn’t do itself any favours with all these questions and unfortunately it’s something that really holds the show back from being more consistent. On the one hand, The Stranded has some nice ideas but the execution has failed to really land in a concise way. Still, with all eyes turning toward a second season, if you’re invested up until this point, you’ll inevitably want to jump back in and find out exactly what’s going on.
