Twisted Serenity: ‘Nine Perfect Strangers’ Delivers Darker Drama in Season 2
Return to Chaos: The Reign of Kidman’s “Masha” Continues
The premiere of the first season of ‘Nine Perfect Strangers’ in 2021 fused glossy wellness satire with examinations of grief in trauma, all in a tropical resort setting. Now, the Hulu series returns for a second season, this time, set in the frigid, stunning Alps. The transformation retreat has only grown more intense, more surreal, and decidedly more dangerous. Nicole Kidman reprises her role as the enigmatic spiritual leader Masha Dmitrichenko, this time reinventing herself as an even more radical figure, facing federal investigations and personal grief head-on with an experimental new therapy: guided psychedelic trips and shared hallucinations.
Where Season 1 took place in the lush, steamy heaven of Masha’s retreat, Tranquilum, Season 2’s snowbound retreat provides a more haunting canvas: less utopia, more clinical wilderness. There is a brutal starkness to this new setting, filmed with wide lenses sometimes reminiscent of ‘The Revenant,’ that deepens the stakes. A shot of Masha scavenging for mushrooms in the snow sets the tone: this is no longer about detox juices and perfectly calibrated wellness meals– it is about confronting death to be reborn. The Alpine setting, evoking a clinical, European disquiet, is beautifully shot but lacks the sensual lure that made Tranquilum so seductive and interesting. Instead of descending into healing, the guests now seem trapped in an emotional escape room designed by an unlicensed therapist with a God complex.
What keeps the sometimes fumbling ‘Nine Perfect Strangers’ afloat is, once again, its stellar ensemble cast. This season’s eclectic group includes Henry Golding as Peter, the emotionally guarded son of a a shadowy billionaire; Annie Murphy (of ‘Schitt’s Creek’) playing dramatically against type as the secretive and self-contained Imogen; Murray Bartlett as the neurotic ex-children’s show host, Brian; and Dolly de Leon (breakout ‘Triangle of Sadness’ star) as ex-nun Sister Agnes.
Murray Bartlett, always excellent, plays a disgraced children’s television host and puppeteer now spiraling into madness. His conversations with his lifeless bear puppet are among the season’s most unsettling yet comedic. Dolly de Leon brings quiet strength and a moral center to the cast of selfish caricatures, even being mistaken for an employee of the retreat by Brian, demonstrating the whiteness at the center of the wellness culture being satirized. She continues her post-‘Triangle of Sadness’ ascent, playing a nun who sees through the guest’s privileged fantasies.
The performances are strong, but the show’s structure and pacing rarely give them space to breathe. Every character comes with a suitcase full of backstory, but instead of unfolding naturally, their trauma is shoved in our faces via stylized hallucinations and expository dream sequences. These flashbacks, while more stylized than the previous season, often feel like strange short films from different shows, lacking a coherent visual or thematic tone. While some backstories feel overloaded with trauma, the actors find nuance in even the most heightened moments.
Psychedelics, Secrets, and the Limits of Prestige Weirdness
Masha’s methodology has evolved, or devolved, into full-blown psychedelic therapy, complete with a Silicon Valley-designed drug delivery system that conveniently unearths each guest’s deepest pain. There is a fascinating (if underexplored) tension between self-optimization and self-destruction. Can healing be forced? Can trauma be relived like a track on a playlist, until it finally dulls?
The answer, according to the show, is yes– but only if you give up your autonomy. Characters are dosed after intense coercion, sent on dangerous expeditions into the cold wilderness. One moment they’re supping tea, next they are screaming at specters of lost children or frolicking wildly in a hallucinogenic haze. It is a dystopia dressed in Goop aesthetic, and the show never truly grapples with how dark that is. Instead, it maintains its cling to shallow hope that healing is possible through spectacle, rather than introspection.
There are kernels of insight: grief as a binding agent, the performative nature of wellness, and how generational wealth often cloaks dysfunction. But these are buried beneath layers of moody lighting, cryptic monologues, and a false belief that the mystery is more interesting than the meaning.
Nicole Kidman remains one of the show’s biggest draws and liabilities. Masha, who once felt like a charismatic enigma, crafted through the wonderful writing of author Liane Moriarty in her novel of the same name, has become a full-blown cult leader with zero self-awareness. She speaks in cryptic, cliche aphorisms like “You have all come here to die, and I will bring you back.” Her God-complex is not interrogated so much as indulged.
The show wants us to thee Masah as both a mad scientist and a tragic heroine, but Kidman’s performance and sometimes faltering Russian accent are so detached that it becomes almost impossible to care about her arc. The main details of her character involve Masha’s dead daughter and her increasingly desperate attempts to bring her back through chemical communion, but it plays less like emotional revelation and more like sci-fi cosplay with an Eastern European accent. The show does little to grapple with the hypocrisy at the core of Masha, a woman constantly preaching to let go of her patients, yet refusing to let go of her trauma. Kidman, however, still brings her willingness to get weird for the sake of something emotionally true.
‘Nine Perfect Strangers’ wants to be a psychedelic thriller, a biting satire of the wellness industry, a grief drama, a spiritual fable– sometimes all in the same scene. It is a show about transformation that resists transforming itself. Season 1 at least flirted with genre experimentation. Season 2 doubles down on tonal confusion. The show remains a strange, genre-busting beast. It is not for everyone, and its tonal whiplash between heightened drama and biting satire can be dizzying.
There is an artistic boldness here that is worth appreciating, even when it does not fully cohere. It may not be the most polished series on TV, but it is one of the few that truly wants to shake you. This is not a simple redemption arc or wellness fantasy. It is a meditation on grief, guilt, and the seductive promise that we can hack our way to wholeness. The show is skeptical of that idea, but still strangely hopeful that healing is possible, even in the mess.
Season 2 of ‘Nine Perfect Strangers’ is a flawed but intriguing exploration of modern healing. Strong performances, a bolder visual style, and a willingness to dive deep into the absurd and the sacred make it a worthwhile, if uneven, journey. Even if you do not love where it takes you, the trip itself offers moments of genuine surprise, ensemble humor, and occasional grace. New episodes of ‘Nine Perfect Strangers’ premiere every Wednesday on Hulu.
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