5 reasons to catch Random Acts of Flyness Season 2

The title for anthology series Random Acts of Flyness Season 2 has the word Random scratched out. It’s an early hint to trust the process as you step into storyteller Terence Nance’s world of magic, ritual, and symbols. Nothing here is really random. 

Each of the six episodes centres on Black liberation, as it follows an American couple, musician Terence Nance (series writer, creator and actor Terence Nance) and his creative partner, video game creator Najja Freeman (Alicia Pilgrim). Together, they work on the spiritual process of healing generational wounds by re-rooting themselves in ancestral practices like the Yoruba’s Ifá, collaborate on creative projects together, and deal with the fallout from ending their romantic relationship. 

While the experience of being Black in the United States of America is specific, there are aspects of the pain it causes, and the questions it raises about identity and opportunity, that resonate globally. So if you’re trying to root out any harmful ideas that you’ve internalised about your place in the world, keep watching! 

For viewers who’re familiar with the concepts that Terence and the Random Acts team are exploring, this will be like slipping into a refreshing stream and letting it spin you around on a journey filled with creative, imaginative, funny and emotional stories, pop culture references and dazzling animated sequences. But even if you’re less familiar, it’s an intensely rewarding show that’ll more than repay the effort you put into exploring it. We’ve picked out just five things that had us clicking to the next episode.

Binge Random Acts of Flyness Season 2 now.

1. Accessible stories on hard topics

The concepts of decolonisation and Black liberation are packed with generations worth of political and philosophical thought, debate and practice. Random Acts of Flyness Season 2 offers a toehold on the slopes – on a compassionate and human scale – as it plays out key concepts through Najja and Terence’s discussions with each other, and the events we see them processing.

You couldn’t ask for a better starting point than stepping into their shoes as they try to navigate through it – because at some points they do have to deal with outsiders, and you see them have to change gears and back up all the way until they can meet those people (and some of us, as viewers) where they are, instead of using the language that makes sense to them where they are currently in their own lives. 

As viewers, we can also do our own research. But each episode expands on what we’ve seen previously, so some topics become clearer, while with others, our understanding becomes more nuanced and complex through the additional information that builds up episode after episode. 

2. An invitation to question reality

Both Najja and Terence are in the process of deconstructing their lives, so Random Acts of Flyness tells stories around a lot of the questions they’re asking, like…

How do you redefine love between two people in a way that hasn’t been warped by societal expectations that no longer apply to you, and that are not healthy or rewarding for you? In episode 2, for example, Terence and Najja’s new lover Xavier (Austin Smith) discuss the fact that Najja didn’t thank Terence during an awards ceremony speech. And Terence speculates that she might not have because she didn’t want people questioning her reliability because she no longer fits their expectations for Black women. Stay tuned though, because there’s plenty more to unpack here.

How do you “sell” a creative concept at work when the (literally) faceless people (nicknamed The Invisibles during the season) who get to decide whether or not you get to make your project have no handle on what you’re saying at all, since none of them are representatives of (or even vaguely familiar with) the audience the product is intended for, or the background you come from?

In the real-life game of property monopoly, how do you instil fairness into a game that was deliberately structured to exclude and disadvantage you? Random Acts of Flyness explores this with wry humour through one of Terence’s seemingly failed projects: a lottery style app called B***h Better Have My Money (BBHMM), which aims to make reparations for the descendants of America’s enslaved Black population a reality. Random Acts explores humans’ desire for land throughout the season, exploring many of the drivers behind it, from a desire for roots, to an impulse rooted in greed, jealousy and pain. 

3. The treasure hunt

While the season centres on a search for meaning, it’s also packed full of enticing details that’ll reward re-watching. If you’re the kind of viewer who obsessed over the lore of shows like Watchmen, Lovecraft Country, or Westworld, that approach to exploring Random Acts of Flyness will provide boundless real and story-world rabbit holes. And speaking of rabbit holes…

In episode 1, in a scene that Najja is using to explain how her video game works, Terence is dressed in a mascot suit that’s just far enough away from the character of Bugs Bunny to dodge copyright claims (that wascally wabbit), but close enough to evoke memories of the cartoon trickster. Najja plays the hunter, chasing him through the streets of the city while carrying a toy gun. As the two dodge about, the cunning bunny might make you think of Yoruba trickster characters like the hare, and Alice in Wonderland’s White Rabbit – since Terence and Najja’s chase seems to be focussed on exploring Terence’s definition of time itself.

And episode 2 starts with Terence ranting about time and being late while name-dropping Anansi, Loki, Heyoka (the Sioux native American sacred clown) and other trickster figures, even weaving Spider Man into the story, while wearing an abstract gold holographic rabbit mask with a red clown nose. Later in the episode, an old-timey style animated documentary short explores the links between all the trickster hares in American culture, exposing the hare’s exclusive contract to Brother We Warned You Studios!

4. The mythology

During Random Acts of Flyness, Najja is relearning the ancestral practices that were stolen from her people during the process of enslavement. She draws on the Yoruba practice of Ifá to reconnect with the wisdom and the spiritual resources it offers via the Orishas – deities embodied in the natural elements who serve as intermediaries between humans and the creator of all things.

Not all deities are what we might consider benign, though, and Random Acts explores the differences between the worlds of men and gods. The series’ part-time narrator, XXXX (Saul Williams) is represented by a man wearing black and red, which connects him to Eleguá, the Lord of the Crossroads. In episode 2, XXXX, while dressed in a white robe and pointed hood, claims, “I am both the message and the messenger. I don’t speak English, only cinema,” and he welcomes us to his new TV show, Contemporary Terrestrials.

As he claims to have invented white supremacist organisation the KKK, chilling documentary footage of children being indoctrinated into the KKK plays. And XXXX points out that from the KKK to the Nazis, those who invoked the spirits of fire, air, earth and water in their rituals, and clung to those beliefs with an immovable conviction and passion, have manifested the things they believed on the physical plane with a genocidal energy. 

5. The humour and visual jokes

Meanwhile, as XXXX talks about the KKK being their intellectual property, a note comes up on screen from him to remind us that the image on screen is, itself, the property of the HBO network! So it pays to pause. 

Pause again during Najja and Terence’s rabbit vs hunter chase in episode 1, as they run through a store that has fairground fortune telling machines in it. Najja passes in front of one with the name Zoltar – which appeared in the 1988 Tom Hanks comedy Big, in which it magically granted a small boy’s wish. 

It’s a blink and you miss it moment, but at the end of the episode, Terence has a consultation with a spiritual guide called The Host (Tashiana Washington) who has offered to “appraise” an object from his life that’s linked to his spiritual wounds, in this case, his passport. He eventually tells her, “There is no justice on stolen land. It’s steal or be stolen from,” and he concludes that his passport is. “a brand. Identification of stolen property: me.” The host then concludes their session by mechanically turning her head to the camera and asking, “Audience, what do we think?” Before turning back to Terence and pulling her veil down over her face, like a fairground machine indicating that the session is concluded. 

For viewers, though, there’s a lot more to see, speculate over, and even laugh about. But be warned! While each of the six episodes is around 30 minutes long, they bend time and before you know it, you’ll have spent two hours pausing, reading, thinking, and pressing play again.

Binge Random Acts of Flyness Season 2 now.