The Robinsons cope with space, family woes in Netflix's 'Lost in Space'
Knowing they can't stay forever on their methane-filled ocean planet, the Robinsons quite literally set sail for new horizons as “Lost in Space” returns for Season 2.
Premiering Tuesday, Dec. 24, on Netflix, the new season finds John (Toby Stephens) and Maureen Robinson (Molly Parker), their offspring Judy (Taylor Russell), Penny (Mina Sundwall) and Will (Maxwell Jenkins), along with Dr. Smith (Parker Posey) and Don West (Ignacio Serricchio), realizing their toxic outpost is no place to make a life. So they outfit the Jupiter with sails to embark on a mission to find a location to launch themselves back into space to rendezvous with the mother ship Resolute.
The visual of the saucerlike ship going off into the distance, sails filled, calls to mind Stephens' previous series, the Starz pirate adventure “Black Sails,” an irony not lost on the actor.
“Yeah, I think the writers were doing a sort of a — yeah, a reference to that mainly,” the British actor says with a laugh.
Juxtaposed to the drama in space is the drama within the family unit. The kids are all maturing, with Will searching for Robot, who disappeared at the end of Season 1; Judy doing more work with John, and Penny trying to figure out where she fits in, as most teens do.
It's the typical family tension: parents dealing with kids turning into their own people and asserting their independence — except here it's happening in space.
“The kids are all growing up,” Stephens says, “and how does that change the dynamic of the family? And how are John and Maureen going to let them go more, give them more responsibility and let them go like any other parent? I mean, that's what was fun about the first (season) as far as I was concerned as an actor, was you're taking this kind of epic, mad adventure that is in space and you're applying normal domestic rules to this like rites of passage for children and adults going through these experiences. They're still the same even though they are light years away from home.”
For daughter Penny, it's all about figuring out who she is and what her place is in the world.
“Her key relationships in isolation from the rest of humanity are with her parents and with her siblings,” Sundwall says, “and a lot of the time she feels like the third wheel because Will is Maureen's favorite child and it feels like Judy is John's favorite child so it leaves her out. So it's finding what she has to contribute in her place in the family and her people skills, which is her strength, and using it to her advantage.”
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“Lost in Space”
Begins streaming its second season Tuesday, Dec. 24, on Netflix