For much of the trailer for Season 2 of Steven Soderbergh’s The Knick, all looks pretty much the same as before, barring a few minor changes. Clive Owen’s Dr. Thackery is still looking to change the world as a premiere mind in (turn of the 20th century) medicine — and is using drugs to do so. Only this year, as was suggested in the finale of the first season, he’ll likely be using more heroin than cocaine, as it was last prescribed as a cure for the latter. Meanwhile, there are glimpses of fights, sinks overflowing with gore, and images of stifling high society New York set against vivid depictions of American structural imbalance and racism.
And this year, it looks like there’s plenty more of that to examine: as was previously noted, the heiress-with-a-heart character Cornelia Robertson has, it seems, relocated to San Francisco. This will likely see the show delving into a subplot about the San Francisco bubonic plague epidemic, and the quarantining of all non-white residents of Chinatown. (This was hinted at in the teaser trailer, and in the full trailer, we briefly see SF’s Chinatown enwrapped in a barbed wire fence.)
All chaos having to do with class, race, gender and of course medicine comes to a halt at the end of the trailer, when it suddenly cuts to an image of a boat out at sea on an ominous night. Then, inside the boat, Dr. Thackery appears to be tied up, and is screaming, “Help!” The trailer ends here, strategically leaving us to wonder how the medical drama lands Thackeray in the middle of Pirates of the Caribbean.
The second season begins October 16 on Cinemax. Watch the trailer: