Nayan unwittingly joins Ahmad's motley crew of betrayers and plotters as the Vice Regent attempts to secretly strike at Kublai from all sides. Also new to the scene is Ron Yuan's Nayan, Kublai's Christian uncle who figures heavily into the Khan feud as well as the curious storyline with Pope Gregory X (Gabriel Byrne) - an angle that looks like it may be explored even further next season. And fans who were excited to see Yeoh on the final season of Strike Back but were then perhaps let down by her lack of fight scenes won't be disappointed here as Lotus takes on just about everyone in her singular, savage crusade.
The most noteworthy newcomer this year is Michelle Yeoh's Lotus - a fierce and fighting part of the Song Dynasty's underground rebellion and a character who figures heavily into the backstory of Tom Wu's Hundred Eyes. In fact, the first episode back - "Hunter and the Sable Weaver" - does a good job of setting up the primary themes of the season as it not only features the marriage of panicking pretender Kukachin to Prince Jingim, but also a flashback showing Genghis favoring Kaidu over Kublai during an attack that features ten thousand flaming swallows soaring over a walled city.
Meanwhile Joan Chen's Chabi, Kublai's loyal and resolute wife, focuses her energies on procuring the Khan an heir. Because as Kublai finds himself sabotaged on several fronts, Kaidu's soul begins to darken thanks to the bitter agenda of his own scheming mother (Jacqueline Chan). Rick Yune finds himself in a much more elevated role this year as Kaidu's challenging of Kublai's authority forms the spine of the season, as does Kaidu's own crumbling morals as his noble intentions quickly dissolve into desperate and regrettable measures. That's not to say the first three episodes don't focus somewhat on re-establishing Kublai's relationship with Polo, but after that Polo is free to more or less drift while characters like Prince Jingim (Remy Hill), Byamba (Uli Latukefu), Khutulun (Claudia Kim) and more take the reins and drive the story on their own. We can watch the series without his presence, his reactions, or judgement. He was our surrogate - and a big reason the first 10 episodes had issues. Looking back, a lot of the first season was dosed out to us through Polo's eyes. The topics and cultures shown here are not ones not readily told and the more this series continues the more if feels like the Marco Polo character was a trojan horse meant to draw us into the complex world of ancient Chinese and Mongolian history, designed to be an initial decoy and then get pushed off to the side. Sweeping grasslands, hugely populated bazaars and cities, and hair-raising fight sequences immediately help draw you into a world not commonly showcased on TV or in movies. Still not a great series, Marco Polo continued to impress with its grandeur and scope and the production levels are still a big notch in the plus column. With his cousin Kaidu (Rick Yune) challenging him for the Khan-ship - through an official all hands vote called the Kurultai - Kublai finds himself being betrayed from behind his own walls - a conspirator in the form of his conquered "son" Ahmad (Mahesh Jadu), which was the seditious swerve that hit us right at the tail end of Season 1. Driving the show this year, in far more effective ways, is Kublai himself - full of doubt, love, anger, stubbornness, and vulnerability. That's not to say he's out of the picture, he's just the least important cog now, and anything remotely intriguing about him that remains is due to lingering elements from the first season - like his affection for Kokachin and his strained relationship with his banished and branded father. And perhaps the show was always meant to feel this way, given how Kublai surrounds himself with followers, sons, and foreigners he's collected like they were all part of his menagerie, but this season you'll really start to wonder why the show is called "Marco Polo" given how demoted Polo feels.
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