The first season of Altered Carbon took place in the year 2384, but as time can be highly relative for various people who populate its universe, it wasn’t necessary for the second to follow directly from where it left off, and it’s actually set almost 30 years later in 2412.
The series is based on novels by British writer Richard Morgan, one of the central ideas of which is the idea of people’s personalities and memories being backed up on an implant known as a ‘cortical stack,’ allowing for consciousness to exist as digital information and ‘real death’ only occurring if the stack is destroyed. The main character, Takeshi Kovacs, is the last of the Envoys, an elite group of super soldiers whose consciousnesses were transmitted as digital information between planets and into temporary host bodies (’sleeves’). In the time since the events of the first season, upgrades have become available to the potential bodies, with his latest sleeve coming with rapid healing and reaction times that make him far more dangerous than he was in his previous form of a police officer.
Kovacs has spent the intervening decades searching for Quellcrist Falconer, his former commander and lover he previously thought permanently dead, after discovering that she could have survived as a mental backup, but having no idea where it could be located.
Although it would have been logical for Altered Carbon to have gone on to adapt the second book in the series, Broken Angels, the plot actually has far more in line with the third and currently final one, Woken Furies, it being far more of a personal story for Kovacs that continues his character development, rather than following the slightly more generic military sci-fi tale of the middle installment. However, the universe in which it’s set has more secrets to unlock, and there’s plenty of opportunity for more decade – and even century – hopping for its antihero warrior permanently existing out of time.