Three amnesiac teens wake up in a cement room with no doors or windows — an ominous mystery they aren’t thrilled about. But that puzzle is the least of their worries. Where are they, who put them there and why does this world want to kill them?
With these questions in mind, super-powered Adam, Mira and Kai begin their quest to get answers and get home, facing challenges in fantastical forests and terrifying temples as they learn to work together.
“The Hollow” has wowed viewers with its smooth storytelling and compelling action since its arrival on Netflix on June 8. With so many questions left unanswered at the end of the first season, fans have begun wondering what might come next. And although Netflix hasn’t confirmed a second season yet, the “What’s on Netflix” website believes that the show, produced by Slap Happy Cartoons Inc., stands in favor of renewal.
What does that mean for those who have binged and fallen in love with “The Hollow”? It’s time to revv up those prediction engines and daydream about what’s to come for Season 2!
Questions Posed in Season 1
The season finale answered so many questions in a dramatic and unusual ending. All of Adam, Mira and Kai’s powers, the abrupt shift in settings loaded magically onto their map and the other, less friendly, group of teens (Vanessa, Skeet and Reeve) competing against them came with a complicated explanation: They had entered a video game. The Weird Guy who came to help them, armed with infinite knowledge and badly-placed portals, was their gameshow host all along. It all makes sense now, right?
But the questions kept coming after that. As the season progressed, more glitches in the heroes’ environment revealed the digital nature of their surroundings. The glitches grew bigger and more troublesome for the characters, and eventually the gameshow host (called The Weird Guy on the IMDb cast page of “The Hollow”) came popping out of nowhere to warn the team that the game’s code was corrupt and collapsing on itself. When they managed to beat the boss battle, the characters desperately hoped that it would bring them out of the game.
HEY YALL, DO YOU WANT GOOD CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT? A GOOD PLOT? LOVABLE CHARACTER? WATCH THE HOLLOW!! IT'S SO GOOD AND DESERVES MORE RECOGNITION!!
— maxine | arcane brainrot!! (@stellarellie) July 11, 2018
When the final scene of the show happened in live-action, almost everything made sense. The heroes returned triumphant to a crowd of fans cheering in a theater where a screen had displayed their every move. The Weird Guy, now the gameshow host, welcomed them back. But the climactic resolution felt wrong, even though everything had already turned out right, and it took me a while to pinpoint why.
Why the End of Season 1 Felt Wrong
If the gameshow host had gone frantically into the game to warn the team of the corrupt code, wouldn’t he have mentioned it when they came out of “The Hollow”? Wouldn’t the inquisitive Adam, Mira and Kai have asked, “Hey, was the code really corrupt, or did you add that for flair?”
Instead, everyone acted like they played a normal video game. They also seemed to regain their memories of reality outside the digital world, which I assume because they showed no surprise at the huge audience in front of them, only at the fact that they won.
If they regained their memories, the possibility exists that they knew the game beforehand and were aware that they would face the collapse of the game. Maybe they had seen other players go through “The Hollow” and thought, “Oh, yeah! We made it through the glitches faster than the last group that won!” or something along those lines.
Then Vanessa’s eye glitched, and it opened up a whole new set of problems.
Vanessa’s Eye Glitch
Vanessa’s suddenly green-and-edgy pixel eye undoes a great deal of the resolution already established. Pixelated glitches don’t happen in the 3D reality, which leaves several possible explanations.
Kai, who saw the glitch, could have some mental issue after being traumatized by playing the game. Maybe his brain hadn’t adjusted back to reality yet. I don’t like this theory because its resolution would probably involve therapy or simply a little time away from a screen (which are both incredibly helpful but not great for entertainment in the style of “The Hollow”). If this happens, Season 2 would be live action and boring.
The game could have grown too powerful and started leaking into reality. This theory seems slightly more plausible than the first theory for a video game TV show, and I would enjoy watching it. If this happens, season two might stay live-action, but I don’t think it will for the same reason I think my last two theories are the best options.
The Best Prediction Ever for What Will Happen in Season 2
Adam, Mira and Kai never left the game.
The team could have leveled up. The memories of Adam, Mira and Kai could remain absent or faulty, and as they “return” to reality, they realize (through the eye glitch) that they have to play another level. They would then go back to the game, which would remove the live action and revert to animation. I suspect this scenario because, after a little digging, I learned some real-life information about the voice actors.
The voices and physical acting looked a little awkward or misaligned in the live action scene. I wondered why such a well-crafted show would seem a pinch sloppy at the end, so I looked up the voice actors. Adrian Petriw voices Adam, Connor Parnall voices Kai and Ashleigh Ball voices Mira — but none of those three play their live action characters at the end. The Adam, Kai and Mira at the end look like their animated counterparts, played by actors Peter Bundic, Harrison Houde and Lana Jalissa, respectively.
It wouldn’t make sense if Slap Happy Studios decided to make the next season entirely live action; why would they hire two sets of actors for their main characters if they had to do the extra work of dubbing voices over every episode? Why wouldn’t they begin with the voices of the live-action actors instead?
I just sat and watched the entire first season of The Hollow in one sitting and I only have one question…. when's season 2??
— eddie ⎊ (@cosmocadetsss) July 11, 2018
The split actors lead me to believe that the live action scene is only temporary. Soon the characters will fall back into the game and only the voice actors will stay, except for rare occasions, and with the possible exception of The Weird Guy, who appears to have only one actor for both voice and live action. He might pop in again without his purple persona or in his 3D reality form.
Some further evidence toward this: Vanessa seemed to know already that she had that glitch in her eye. That sinister smirk leads me to believe that she doesn’t believe she lost at all, and she would have plenty more opportunities to win The Hollow again — or maybe she controls more of the game than she lets on, and she has some nefarious plans for how to control the others.
So many questions, so many theories and so many possibilities for what could come in Season 2. “The Hollow” holds mountains of potential to blow the audience’s mind in episodes to come. As long as it gets renewed — and a show this good should definitely get renewed — the real answers will arrive soon enough.
