It ’s ironic that in its 2nd season , American Gods , a showabout old gods fighting to persist relevantin a domain besieged by novel deities , palpate like it ’s taking a more traditional feeler to storytelling . That ’s when you equate it to its first time of year , which was visually bold and unlike anything else on television at the time . Yes , American Gods , like its grapheme , is changing .
Appropriately name after Odin ’s trusted raven Muninn — one of the dual embodiments of his thought and storage — this week ’s installment is a rumination on the past and how events set in movement long ago are still wreak out in ways trusted to impact events of the future . What ’s honest-to-goodness is new and what ’s raw is old , and if all of the show ’s characters would keep that in intellect , chances are their lives would all be far , far dewy-eyed .
More explicitly exemplify the mystical rule American Gods is defined by has made this time of year of the show feeldecidedly more grounded , which so far has been neither a salutary affair nor a uncollectible thing , it simply is . You ’ve got to make the decision whether the show ’s newest incarnation is still thekind of ride you want to be along for .
All of the emotional heft of Wednesday sacrificing his Cadillac Betty in the last episode begins to be undo as “ Muninn ” open air , and we see just what kind of scheme the Allfather was catch up to by parking his car on the gear tracks in the first place . Like her driver and all of his oddball friend , Betty is n’t really what she seems and beneath her mundane vehicular frontal burns an interesting truth : Betty ’s one of Odin horses ( if not the embodiment of all of the god ’s horses ) forge into a anatomy more appropriate for an erstwhile human race to be get around in .
By initiative with Betty ’s seeming Resurrection of Christ ( unless that ’s some other random car Wednesday and Mad Sweeny stuff Laura into the torso of ) , “ Muninn ” reminds us that there ’s still quite a spot of illusion to the old gods and that the power of a forfeiture is something all of the divine beings can manage to mould into astrategic movefor themselves . It ’s that peak that makes Wednesday ’s determination to leave a badly - injured Shadow in the wreckage of the geartrain collapse slightly less curious ; it ’s obvious that American Gods is n’t done explore their relationship , but for the time being , the two of them are meant to be apart .
As obvious as Wednesday ’s design on Shadow are to us as an consultation , they ’re not something most of the other characters ( aside from Laura ) seem particularly interested in . Laura herself does n’t make much of Wednesday ’s interest group in her ex - husband outside of the fact that their no longer being together is , at least partially , the study of the graven image . The more time she spends with the divinity , the more you appreciate how much more the show is giving her to do compare to Neil Gaiman ’s original novel , and Wednesday ’s mention to her as a revenant makes her presence within the story experience much more consanguineous to that of Mad Sweeney and the Jinn . Like them , she ’s neither a god nor a deadly , but a being whose very existence is wrapped up in thaumaturgy more so than any other secular fear .
Laura is a zombie walking through her afterlife with a radical of graven image she does n’t believe in even though she can touch and smell them . And yet , for all the weirdness of her fate , she ’s unbothered by all of it and resolute in her conclusion to find Shadow for reasons that she herself ca n’t fully articulated . Laura ’s inability to be forthright about her intentions are mirror is Wednesday ’s lack of desire to do the same , and as the two of them travel off in Betty in search of Argus Panoptes , it ’s impossible not to get the good sense that the two of them might very well buck Shadow apart in their own little , more personal engagement over him .
Before any of that can go down , however , Shadow ’s get problems of his own to deal with by style of fail to grift a woman out of her money , and then accidentally crossing paths with Sam Black Crow ( Devery Jacobs ) , a vernal Two - Spirit char who ’s immediately able to see through the lies he tells about himself . Like Shadow , Sam ’s truly skeptical about everything she sees around her , but her spirituality and respect for things larger than herself that she ca n’t yet see is part of what makes her so much more clear - minded than Shadow could ever be .
Seeing New Media and the Technical Boy together in hunting of Argus , the mythologic , many - eyed giant who now functions as the embodiment of the American surveillance state , is fascinating because , in a way , none of the three could full live with other the other two and they ’re all concepts that have existed in one form or another over the millennia . But here , in this state of war , as they ( attempt to ) come together , they ’re all cognisant that any one of them could be blend in in an instant , another fatal accident of the fighting . For all of her workplace cordiality and charm , New Media understands the risk that being in a locating like hers has put her in , and so she clearly makes moves of her own to mate with Argus for her own personal reasons — Mr. World ’s plans be damn .
The way that both Wednesday and the Technical Boy move to veer New Media ’s business leader act short feels declarative of the direction American Gods is going this time of year . While there ’s definitely a state of war waging , there are also innumerous diminished , more strategic struggle to be agitate along the way , and everyone ’s got to be careful about how they move forward , lest they end up making the incorrect move and prick the dust .
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