With the Wild Cards finale right around the corner, now feels like the perfect time to ask: what exactly is going on with this season?
How does a series that consistently delivers joy, comfort, and fun suddenly feel so… off?
Wild Cards has always been the epitome of a comfort watch. Cozying up to it has been one of my quiet joys every season. But this time, it’s left me feeling discombobulated and wanting, and I’ve been trying to figure out why.
To my relief, apparently, it’s not an unpopular thought, so the question becomes, why isn’t Wild Cards doing what it always does faithfully, stealing our collective hearts?
With Wild Cards Season 2, it felt like the series had found its rhythm and sweet spot, and that it could only go up from there.
Each episode offered an interesting case, the quirky fun we come to love about this series, and sharpened that dynamic between Max and Ellis.
It’s that relationship that is at the core of the series. Most of us signed up for a slow burn and know it takes time for great things to brew properly.
And the pacing of the sophomore season in that regard was pure perfection.
It’s the season when Max stops being that pesky consultant Ellis is begrudgingly saddled with and becomes a full-fledged, valued member of their team.
It’s also the season where Max and Ellis become something akin to best friends.
Their bond is undeniable, and it’s layered. Ellis trusts Max with his deepest vulnerabilities, and their connection anchors some of the strongest episodes of the series.
The arc surrounding Ellis’ brother’s murder, with Max keeping him from spiraling, gave us some of the show’s most powerful material and some of Giacomo Giannotti’s best performances.
There were multiple moments where his portrayal of Ellis was absolutely devastating.
Whether it was assurances of being one’s cricket, kisses under the influence, or Max realizing that this group of people were her family and that she loved them — wanted to be with them, there was so much delicious character work happening and exploration.
Some of that even expanded to its supporting characters.
Wild Cards Season 2 Episode 7, “The Big Bang Theory,” was a divine episode, not just for Max and Ellis, as the indescribable connection between them was palpable in those intense moments.
But it was a fantastic episode for Max and Chief Li, an underrated duo we explore a bit this season in satisfying ways.
The sophomore season sprinkled enough character evolution to satisfy us with the growth and trajectory of Max and Ellis, not just individually but together.
And the season finale sparked all this hope and excitement for what the third season could bring and its ramifications.
But then we got to this season, and it’s just … there, not giving us much to cling to at all.
One of the biggest bombshells from the sophomore finale was the return of Max’s mother after 15 years. We thought this woman was dead, and yet there she is waltzing back into their lives looking fabulous and very much alive.
Tamara Taylor is fantastic as Vivienne, doing the most with what she’s given. But that’s just it—she hasn’t been given nearly enough.
This should have been Max’s defining arc of the season: reckoning with abandonment, betrayal, and unresolved trauma. Instead, it’s largely sidelined.
For reasons that elude me, a storyline that should have been explored in multiple ways across the entire season is kept in the background, seemingly saved for the final stretch.
We spent all of Wild Cards Season 2 exploring Ellis’s depth and layers as he grew increasingly on edge while trying to resolve his brother’s murder.
It led to so much great content that gave Ellis more dimension and deepened his relationship with Max.
Daniel Ellis comes to life for viewers and Max through Cole’s memories, stories, others in his life, and the people he encountered during this investigation.
And it never detracts from the show or its focus; rather, it enhances it and helps us learn more about the characters we already cherish.
Somehow, Vivienne’s return doesn’t do that for Max.
Instead of giving us a full season of Max reconciling with her mother’s return, the trouble she’s brought into their lives, and how she’s disrupted the life Max has created for herself, Vivienne is a disruptive force who breezes in and out with little depth.
We don’t properly dig into just how much her disappearance damaged Max and George. We get one good episode of Ricky being the only one to really call Vivienne out.
And what should’ve been Max’s primary arc and the biggest conflict for why Max and Ellis stall gets shoved to the fringes.
It’s all in favor of Max pining for Ellis as he happily and brazenly flaunts his new romance with the technically fine but thinly written Jessica.
Do I love Max and Ellis? Of course, I do. But they set up Wild Cards Season 3 as Max’s time for a big family arc, which is significant as she faces a mother she thought had abandoned her and then died.
Season 3 sets up the perfect opportunity for role reversal: Ellis supporting Max the way she once supported him. It’s a natural progression for their relationship—romantic or not.
But the show never fully leans into that.
The season lets Max down as much as Ellis does on that front.
Because it would also have put Ellis in a challenging position — supporting Max the way she needed and deserved while also juggling his new relationship with Jessica.
The crux of the tension there would have also been Ellis’ discovery that Max was on her way to that boat after all.
The latter bit, Ellis, oddly enough, doesn’t even entertain very much. It feels like the third season completely wastes all the great tension and potential conflict from the cliffhanger season two setup.
Ellis doesn’t even learn much about Vivienne at all until a few episodes into the season.
We watched him lean so much on Max and her family in the sophomore season that he’s become one of them, and then with Vivienne, it feels like an ocean between him and them with this arc.
There’s no real processing or exploration of the complexities of Ellis genuinely loving his new relationship with Jessica, and the knowledge of what he almost could have had with Max.
Instead, Ellis shoves it aside, even behaving alarmingly aloof about Max’s feelings or how much their friendship has changed with Jessica in the picture.
We ended the second season with Ellis not just a romantic possibility for Max, but still an instrumental person in her life, her best friend.
And the third season spends most of its time with them slipping into more professional courtesy and cordiality than their layered love.
Ellis almost reads as emotionally distant and even insensitive toward Max.
Given that we sacrificed most of the season and a rich, thorough exploration of Max’s dynamic with Vivianne for Max to pine over Ellis, it’s wholly unsatisfying that the season even fumbles the angst in that arc.
Max gets to shine in some aspects. A bright spot of the season is in the recognition of how much the rest of the team values and respects Max and what she offers.
It’s particularly endearing how the season consistently pulls on the thread that Max and Chief Li are more alike than different and have had a special bond since the bombing.
Ironically, that’s probably Max’s best relationship onscreen all season.
But the third season also doesn’t give us more exploration of the other characters in the same vein. Three seasons in, we should know more about Yates and Simmons than we do.
They’ve earned the right to be more than just sidelined supporting characters.
They should peel back more layers to them as well, and delivering on that in the final episodes of the season doesn’t really count.
The previous season perfectly sets up a season that delves into the other characters surrounding Max and Ellis a bit more, yet somehow underdelivers on that, too, for no real reason. We had the time and opportunities.
In many ways, it feels like we’ve seen more surrounding Jessica than Yates, Simmons, and many of the others.
The season does give us a bit for George, as midway through, he finally starts to realize that maybe the lifestyle Vivienne still glamorizes isn’t for him anymore.
Meanwhile, the Varga arc looms.
The heist job is fed to us just enough to remember its existence, but not so much that it moves things forward very much, which means that we’ll likely have an explosive final two episodes where it all clicks into place.
And that’s fine. Wild Cards can pull that off most of the time.
But the Varga angle is a threat that doesn’t feel as pronounced, and thus even more difficult to invest in, especially because Vivienne remains so much a mystery, and she’s the entire reason they’re in this mess.
I’ve surmised that the issue with the Varga plot is that it feels as if the season has spun its wheels until the end.
Perhaps that’s why Wild Cards Season 3 isn’t clicking into place as well. It feels like the season lost the momentum from the second season and is just biding its time until the fourth.
We’ve had plenty of content, but not nearly enough substance.
Over to you, Wild Card Fanatics. If you’re out there, and you read this, let me know your thoughts!
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