Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Chris Revelle | TV | August 10, 2026
Sugar wrapped up its second season with a well-made, well-acted, yet baffling finale. “Like Sugar” had several threads to resolve and settled for resolving one, maybe one and a half if you squint. It’s understandable to leave threads dangling to entice viewers for another season, but the amount of information held feels unsatisfying. This season ended teasing much of the same things the first season did, namely Sugar’s missing sister, Djen, and the mysterious organization that threatened the aliens. But before we get into all that jazz, here’s how all this season’s mysteries finished up.
With Vega dead, Sugar sets about dismantling the rest of Vega’s wide-reaching scheme by having everyone involved, from dirty cops to a corrupt assemblywoman, arrested. It’s a tidy ending for such a messy, socially relevant crime, but there’s only so much our alien PI can do. With Flyvbjerg dying of tuberculosis and the murder of Vega looming large over his head, Sugar strikes out to do some human things like bare-knuckle boxing and dating sexy, shady Charlotte. When Charlotte asks him to move with her to Milan now that the mystery is solved, Sugar knows something’s up.
One trip to shady Senator Pavich’s place later and it all comes out: Pavich and his shadowy cabal are working with Djen to create climate-altering technology. Charlotte is working with them. Djen had a breakthrough before the events of season 1, and she exposed the aliens’ presence to the cabal so that she could be left to her work that explicitly violates the alien rule of non-involvement in human affairs. Sugar is drugged while Djen’s tech is demonstrated for members of the cabal. In his haze, he has a vision of Charlotte claiming she was ordered to report her impressions of him, and their romance is otherwise genuine. When he eventually snaps out of it, Sugar seeks out Jonathan Siegel to explain that the human conception of the self is a lifelong journey he is just beginning to experience now.
To the season’s credit, the struggle of how the aliens “assimilate” and succumb to human impulses and desires they have no real way to modulate is a fascinating dynamic. Jonathan’s speech puts a too-tidy bow on things, seeming to opt for an emotional resolution instead of plot illumination. That leaves us with tons of unanswered questions.
What do Djen and the cabal plan to do with her crazy weather machine? What is the cabal even about? What caused Djen to decide she needs to save the earth from humanity? These are all questions the finale dangles, presumably to tee up a third season. The problem is that the mystery of Djen and the cabal was also teased last season. The beginning of season 2 suggested we’d make some headway in that direction, but there was scarcely any progress. It’s almost like Sugar is saying, “I know I said I’d tell you this time, but I extra super promise to tell you next season.”
Sugar is a stylish show with talented actors and an appreciable sense of empathy. Its downfall is, once again, in how it reveals plot points related to the aliens. Viewers didn’t get nothing; Djen and her technology are interesting turns, but their impact is blunted by being punted all the way to the finale. There’s tremendous potential for thematic resonance with the brothers Moon, but it goes unrealized. Perhaps all these questions will be answered in a future season, but as of now, no renewal has been announced. At the end of its second season, Sugar repeated its first season finale and once again promised to tell us all the juicy alien details next season.
