Making A Murderer season 2 has left both Steven Avery and Netflix in a worse position than where it started. The first season of Making A Murderer was one of the most successful early Netflix Originals. While exact viewership numbers are unclear, the way that the show dominated social media and began to influence real-world events is testament enough to its status as one of the streaming service's biggest phenomena. Season 2, however, only serves to undo much of that.

A true crime documentary, Making A Murderer famously charts the unfortunate life of Steven Avery. A Wisconsin man incarcerated for 18 years under false rape charges, he was recommitted following the disappearance and murder of photographer Teresa Halback, with his nephew Brendan Dassey as an accomplice. However, as Making A Murderer argues, Avery may just be innocent, with the police framing him to avoid a payout for his previous conviction and Brendan's damning confession the product of manipulative interview tactics. The first season deconstructed the decade-long cases in informative and entertaining fashion, making a compelling argument that captured imaginations the world over.

Related: Making A Murderer Season 2 Ending: What Happened & What's Next

Making A Murderer season 2, on the other hand, is a walkthrough what's happened in the two years since. And, as anybody who's seen the mainstream news coverage sparked by the first season, it doesn't end in any resolute way. Instead, Making A Murderer is a totally defunct sequel, a reiteration of what was known from season 1 with carefully paced new evidence that - while still certainly entertaining - only serves to weaken the case in defense of Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey, as well as Netflix's position as premiere content producer.

Making A Murderer Season 2's Defences Leave Too Many Questions

Making a Murderer season 2 - Kathleen Zellner

Much of the first episode of Making A Murderer season 2 is spent on recreating the placing of Teresa Halback into the back of the Rav4 in a bid to show that the blood splatters couldn't have been placed naturally. Wrongful conviction attorney Kathleen Zellner and her team buy an identical Rav4, tape weights to a dummy, paint its hair with fake blood, and have an Avery double throw it in the back. It's a startling entrance to the new world of Making A Murderer, where broad recreations are taken as resolute evidence and disproof of the cases against are prioritized over season 1's careful presentation of new information in defense.

Kathleen Zellner is very good at what she does, evidenced by her many wins, but there's something unsettling about the approach as presented in Making A Murderer season 2. By nature of the postconviction structure in America, overturning a verdict hinges more of undoing the specific case - finding negligence and wrongdoing on the part of prosecution and defense - than it does getting to the truth (that is what an eventual second trial would focus on). Because of that, much of the season is about proving Avery's innocence while breaking down the problems in his trial, with attempts to outright present the truth saved for the end. The unsettling thing is that the methodology doesn't really require a defendant to be innocent; it's about finding faults in the system, not a lack of guilt.

So while we eventually get a viable Denny suspect that lines up with a more believable timeline, there's an imbalance of showy theatrics to the procedure itself that makes the documentary feel hamstrung by the case. Indeed, it should be noted - but isn't - that despite multiple letters, Zellner didn't have an interest in Steven's case until Making A Murderer turned him into a household name, and further that much of the footage is shot with her involvement, twisting the show further as a tool in the court of public opinion than a continuing documentary.

On the other side of the Making A Murderer story, there are Brendan Dassey's lawyers who come across totally earnest. Laura Nirider and Steven Drizin, of the Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth, fight to overturn Dassey's conviction based on his false confession; seeing the mentally-impaired minor coerced and fed information by interrogators, it forms the basis of pretty much the entire case against him (and a key pillar in the prosecution against Avery). Nirider and Drizin's fight up the legal chain, from state to federal to Supreme Court is a story of resilience, of fighting for the right thing, and one that by the time Making a Murderer season 2 comes to a close is seemingly hopeless. And yet they vow to keep going.

That's most certainly the clearer side of the story, although a lot of the more interesting aspects are still avoided. Zellner criticizes Nirider's presentation before the Chicago Seventh Circuit for not being rooted enough in the facts, with responses to tough questions relying on case law and the permutable moral right, while an unspoken aspect of both cases is that they inextricably lean on each other. While this has no bearing on the truth, it doesn't leave the situation as clear as a clearly-angled defense should.

Making A Murderer Season 2 Doesn't Help Steven Avery

Making a Murderer's Steven Avery

Making A Murderer season 1 did a world of good for Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey. It brought their wrongful conviction case into the biggest spotlight imaginable, with millions learning about their trials and tribulations on Netflix and it subsequently becoming one of the most well-covered legal cases in the press. It also gave both the ability to set up full defenses that have a chance - albeit a slim one - of succeeding.

In contrast, what does Making a Murderer season 2 do? It brings attention back to the pair and allows several points - be it missing evidence from season 1 or new developments - to be brought to light, but ultimately all it's really doing is showing the futility of the postconviction spectrum while trying to feign optimism; each episode meticulously details the attempts to free the pair only for them to be consistently blocked. By the end, while both legal teams are promising to continue the fight, the ordeal feels over. There is very little hope. Whereas season 1 felt like the beginning of the fight, Making A Murderer season 2 is the unwitting end.

That's a disquieting message the series itself doesn't seem to want to push, yet has certainly altered the mood around the case. How Netflix releases its shows, hiding some off the landing page and otherwise burying the latest seasons under a wave of other content, surely played a part, but it's remarkable how reduced the impact of Making A Murderer season 2 has been upon its debut. And while when that happens for the Marvel Netflix shows it can see the likes of Iron Fist or Luke Cage canceled, here we're talking about the lives of two seemingly innocent people. All this new season has done is draw a line under it all.

Page 2 of 2: The Problems Making A Murderer Season 2 Has For Netflix

Making a Murderer season 2 Avery family

Making A Murderer Season 2 Is Too Long (And Nothing Happens)

The biggest problem facing Netflix's original content is its length. Thanks to their focus on audience retention and the all-giving algorithm, their series tend to come in at either 10 or 13 episodes regardless of actual content. While a few years ago, that was viewed as short, in the modern landscape of serialized television it's on the longer side, and typically leads to stretched out seasons. The Marvel Netflix shows are an oft-cited example (especially due to their prominence), but it runs across most series Netflix produces and drops all in one go.

Related: Netflix Marvel Shows Aren't Too Long - They're Badly Told

And nowhere is it more evident than with Making A Murder season 2, a ten-episode order that is too long and too inflexible for the story at hand. It's apparent immediately that to tell Avery and Dassey's cases over the past two years doesn't require ten hours, yet the show feels forced into doing it. As a result, information is teased slowly out at a snail's pace, with excessive focus put on Zellner researching information she could easily relay in a fraction of the time and a detailed look at how the Averys have been affected with the cloud over them. The sum effect of this is that it makes everything feel less important.

Making A Murderer season 2 would have worked best as a pair of feature-length episodes, giving time to focus on the essential details while avoiding any bloat. This sort of alternative releasing method is well within the reach of a company that simply needs to push a button to put something live, and that this unique series was treated to a generic season only goes to highlight the self-imposed limits Netflix has on their original series.

Making A Murderer Season 2 Fails To Critique Itself

But where Making A Murder season 2 stumbles most is in something more insular than its legal or streaming context: it loses sight of itself. The new episodes open with a montage of news reports on season 1, exploring its unexpected and explosive impact on the discourse, the ensuing grassroots campaigns and highlighting missed information. It's a bold move, one that suggests the show wants to explore its own role in the process it is documenting. And yet, once the sequence is over, this idea is never returned to.

That Steven's DNA was on the hood latch of the Rav4, a detail omitted entirely from season 1, is brought up straight away to be debunked, but any other claims - that the show is perverting the course of justice or the wider debate of unfolding true crime as entertainment - are ignored. In fact, Making A Murderer season 2 is contextually deaf throughout. It skirts over how Zellner only agreed to help Avery after he became a high-profile case, while the questionable actions of Steven's potentially fame-hungry fiance Lynn Hartman are glossed over. The show seems to have no interest in even contemplating the impact of the media circus it created unless it's to demonize the prosecution. And why would it? The entire idea of a second season of Making A Murderer comes from the success of the first, rather than the necessity of the case.

What makes this decision so galling is that viewers have been treated to just such an analysis by fellow Netflix Original American Vandal. Season 1 of the true crime mockumentary was, on the surface, pretty much a straight Making A Murderer parody, just with graffitied genitalia. However, halfway through the (short) eight-episode run, the scripted show began to explore the impact an unrolling documentary had on the subject, seeing the producers become stars themselves, innocent participants having their reputations damaged, and the notion of the endeavor question. Season 2 continued that with a new mystery that again used meta-textual commentary, this time to explore how too intimate a relationship with a not-so-innocent subject can completely skew reporting. For a show that thrives on teenage vulgarity for laughs to provide such a mature analysis of the documentary format (as well as analyzing Generation Z's reliance upon technology) while Making A Murderer shirks this responsibility is careless.

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Making A Murderer season 2 is not necessarily bad TV, but it is ill-presented. It makes the defenses of the main players look interchangeably circumstantial and hopeless despite the truth, weakening resolve that either Steven or Brendan will ever be released. And thanks to Netflix's rigid release structure, its lack of resolution is dragged out and tough to swallow. There is certainly a need for a follow-up to the seminal first season of Making A Murderer, but it shouldn't have been done now or like this.

Next: What To Expect From Making A Murderer Season 3