Warning: SPOILERS ahead for Altered Carbon season 2.
In a world where people’s minds are stored as code the possibilities are endless - and one of those endless possibilities is realized in Altered Carbon season 2, when Takeshi Kovacs comes face-to-face with himself. In the sophomore season of the Netflix sci-fi series, Takeshi is offered a deal in exchange for protection: an advanced combat sleeve with all the bells and whistles (which comes in the shape of Anthony Mackie), and a chance to reconnect with his long-lost love, Quellcrist Falconer.
Quell isn’t the only person from Takeshi’s past that he meets in Altered Carbon season 2, however. Colonel Ivan Carrera, leader of an elite military team called the Wedge, is revealed to be Takeshi’s old CTAC unit leader, Jaeger. He may have a new face and a new name, but Carrera is still obsessed with Takeshi and determined to hunt him down. This obsession runs so deeply that Carrera risks capital punishment by committing a highly illegal act: putting an old copy of Takeshi’s mind into a clone of his birth sleeve (played by Will Yun Lee) and recruiting him for the Wedge.
Double-sleeving or multi-sleeving is the practice of having multiple copies of a person conscious in different bodies at the same time. Even in a world where people shed and exchange bodies like clothes, double-sleeving is considered to be an abomination. But while Takeshi Kovacs and Takeshi Kovacs Prime may have come from the some original DHF, they’re not quite the same person.
Who Is Takeshi Kovacs Prime?
As Carrera explains, the Protectorate “backs up stacks of any soldier valuable enough to preserve.” These stacks are kept on ice so that in the event of the soldier’s death, a copy can be woken up in a new body to continue fighting. Takeshi Kovacs Prime is one such copy, made before Takeshi first met Quellcrist Falconer and ended up switching sides to join her resistance group. Takeshi Prime believes that he has been in a VR recuperation suite following a mission, and is shocked to learn that he has actually been in limbo for 300 hundred years.
Before Takeshi met Quell he was the perfect CTAC soldier: a skilled fighter who was dispassionate enough to get the job done, no matter how cruel. He was personally recruited and trained by Jaeger, which is why Jaeger/Carrera still has such a powerful fixation on him. He sees Takeshi Kovacs as the one that got away, and violates the law against double-sleeving because he wants his perfect soldier back.
In combat, Takeshi Kovacs Prime is almost a perfect match for the Takeshi Kovacs who has been the protagonist of the show so far. His newly-cloned body is even equipped with the same enhancements that the other Takeshi has, including rapid healing. However, the Takeshi that we know has thirty years of experience on Takeshi Prime, including all of the Envoy training that he did with Quell. Needless to say, Kovacs vs. Kovacs makes for a pretty interesting fight.
More: Altered Carbon Season 2’s Sci-Fi Jargon Explained
