The third season of Netflix’s Lost in Space dropped today, delighting fans of the family sci-fi series and prompting a few questions about the series’ second season.
Season two of Lost in Space was released all the way back in late 2019, so it’s been awhile since viewers last saw the Robinson family. The third season’s official release has pushed some fans to realize that they hardly remember the events of season two, let alone how it ended. Here are all the refreshers you need to dive into season three.
What happened in season two of Lost in Space?
The second season delved a bit deeper into the Robot aliens that are at the core of the Lost in Space story. It revealed that the energy source that allowed humanity to jump from Earth to Alpha Centauri actually belonged to the Robots and was ultimately the reason the Resolute was attacked at the outset of the series. The theft of the alien engine led the Robots straight to the humans, and they’ve shown over several confrontations that they will stop at nothing to protect their own.
This entire issue is at the core of the series. For one thing, the famous Robot⏤and his signature line, “Danger, Will Robinson”—would never have appeared if not for the engine. Perhaps more importantly, the engine is the only thing allowing humans to jump from Earth to Alpha Centauri, which means that our heroes are cut off from their colony without it.
A few other things happen over the course of the season⏤Maureen leads a mutiny, Penny gets a boyfriend⏤but the most important moments occurred at the very end. The hunt for the alien engine again cropped up in the season finale, when a horde of Robots swarmed the Resolute. Scrambling to escape, the colonists were forced to make a very difficult decision.
Against the wishes of several of the main cast members, the colonists decided to split up. They loaded all 97 colonist kids, including Judy, Penny, and Will, into a single Jupiter with Will’s Robot and the alien engine, leaving their parents behind. The parents, meanwhile, rushed to locate their own Jupiters to flee the Resolute in, an act that was only possible due to the sacrifice made by Scarecrow⏤the series’ second alien Robot⏤and Dr. Smith. Smith has managed to wiggle her way out of numerous deadly scenarios, however, so there’s a small chance that she could return in season three.
The second season left off with all 97 kids packed into a single Jupiter, headed by Judy Robinson. The adults, meanwhile, were left scattered among numerous non-alien-powered spacecrafts, free floating in space without a clear path back to Earth or to Alpha Centauri.
The kids, intending to jump to safety in Alpha Centauri, instead appeared at a different location, near the spaceship Fortuna. It was lost more than 20 years ago, according to the show’s canon, and contained a very important character: Judy’s biological father, Grant Kelly.
The season’s final moments set the series up for an action-packed and intriguing third season, with many of the characters separated and several overarching questions left to linger.
Hopefully those questions will be answered in Lost in Space’s third season.
