'Sugar' Season 2 Episode 2 Recap & Ending Explained: Is John Dead Or Alive?

In episode 1 of Sugar Season 2, John learned that Henry was in Myanmar. When he finally tracked Henry down, he found out that he had taken his own life. As Henry was taking his final breaths, John asked him what he had done to Djen, but Henry didn’t say anything and just passed away. With Henry gone, John was truly alone on Earth. So, he returned to LA and began searching for a job, which was a real uphill task, because Ruby used to deal with that stuff. Thankfully, Munzer, the limo driver, got John in touch with a boxer named Danny. He needed help with finding his brother, Ji, who had gone missing. After searching through the places that Ji frequented, John met a woman at a pool parlor who pointed him in the direction of Hannah, Ji’s friend who worked at St. Anthony’s Hospital. Hannah revealed that she had helped Ji steal a bunch of drugs from the hospital. He was supposed to sell it and split the profits. But Ji never met Hannah again, thereby ripping her off. John tried to ascertain where Ji could have run off to after exiting the hospital, but he didn’t find anything substantial. So, John decided to focus on his side-mission: stalking Senator Pavich from his second home (in the Hollywood Hills) in order to understand how much he knew about the aliens, and whether or not the humans were making some moves to do something to the aliens. In addition to that, he had ordered some mysterious item from a company called S.P.A.C.E. whose purpose wasn’t revealed. What happened next? Let’s find out.

Spoiler Alert

John Forms A Bond With Val

Episode 2 opens with the drive-by shooting/assassination of a random guy walking on the streets as John is talking about how LA is a city of immigrants and the fact that, much like the human residents, he’s an alien there too, literally and figuratively. Speaking of the assassination itself, it’s evident that the gang members are looking for Ji. But they see some Asian-looking dude on the sidewalk and send him into the afterlife. Later on, we see Val (the girl who stole John’s car and gave it back to him $300) visiting John at the Hotel Del Corazon, and it seems like she has become his car’s caretaker of sorts. It does look like she is scamming John by making him pay for repairs that the car doesn’t even need and, of course, John knows that (he’s not an idiot). The reason he’s indulging her is because, I suppose, he hopes that if she stays with him long enough, he can set her straight by giving her a proper job which’d not involve any kind of thieving and swindling. Val obviously doesn’t trust John enough to say “yes” on the spot; so, she says that she’s gonna think about it. It’s evident that John sees something of Djen in Val. In Season 1, he imagined that by saving Olivia, he was kinda saving Djen. And I guess in this season, he’s trying to form a sibling-esque bond with Val to fill the hole left by Djen.

John Meets Tom

John takes off for the day and swings by the gym (it’s called Tuff Tuff, it seems) where Danny trains to give him the update that Ji went on the run after stealing drugs from St. Anthony’s Hospital. As Danny is explaining how all this is very uncharacteristic of Ji, John gets a call from Tom and he excuses himself. Danny’s coach uses this opportunity to advise his student to stop worrying about Ji and focus on how he’s gonna move up the ranks and become one of the best boxers out there. As John is leaving the gym, Danny asks him if that call was about Ji, but John doesn’t say anything conclusive; he just says that he’s gonna keep him updated. John reaches the morgue, where we are introduced to Tom, someone John had helped when his wife went missing during a hiking trip in Ojai (a city in California). John found out that she hadn’t actually gone missing; she was probably just trying to get away from Tom. Why? Well, for starters, the chronic coughing might’ve been one of the biggest reasons. Coming back to the topic at hand, Tom asks John to come to the morgue and ascertain if the dead Asian guy they have there is Ji or not.

Ji Is Still Alive

All it takes is one look for John to say that while the dead guy in the morgue looks like Ji, thankfully, it’s not. Additionally, the guy who shot this seemingly innocent man is dead too. He was a member of a gang called Ez4 and he had been assigned to kill Ji. The circumstances under which he died are unclear. Was he killed for murdering the wrong guy, or did the LAPD kill him for shooting down an innocent man in broad daylight? I think it’s the latter, but that’s inconsequential, at least for now. John goes back to St. Anthony’s Hospital to parse through the security footage to see if he can find any more clues regarding Ji’s escape from that building. He runs into the “Employee of the Month” who has been fired, wishes her all the best, and continues with his job. He meets up with Blaine again and accesses the CCTV records, where he sees that, after stealing the drugs, Ji made a pit stop on the 5th floor, where he saw something that spooked him. With Hannah’s help, John learns that a guy called Jesus was admitted there a day before Ji performed the heist, and he was in a room on the 5th floor; he died, eventually. While combing through that room, John realizes that Ji had encountered a mysterious guy (in an all-black outfit). He had tried to hide from this guy in the closet of that room, but the guy found Ji, took his photo, and sent it to the Ez4s. Who’s this mystery dude? That’s the million-dollar question.

John Does Some Research On The Ez4s

We see Danny returning to his apartment, where he learns from the landlord that the rent hasn’t been paid, since that’s something that Ji usually does. Danny leaves an angry voice note on Ji’s phone and then stares at the wall, wondering how things keep getting worse for him. Later that night, Danny gets a call from someone supposedly asking him if he wants to make some money on the side. Since Danny is struggling to pay the rent, he accepts the job. Meanwhile, back at the Hotel Del Corazon, John, after failing to communicate with anyone from his species who’s still around, focuses on learning about the gang, the Ez4s. Once he thinks that he has seen enough, he heads to the in-house restaurant to have dinner. While waiting for the server, he tinkers with the ice in his glass with the help of his telekinetic superpowers, but as soon as Charlotte sits down on the table beside him, he stops it. Eric, the server, arrives to take his order, and John asks him whether or not he got the callback for the role he had auditioned for. When Eric says that he didn’t, John uses Sydney Greenstreet, who caught his “big break” at the ripe age of 61, to illustrate the fact that you never know when you are gonna make it big; the key is to keep trying and not give up on the thing you love. 

John Is Falling In Love With Charlotte

Eric appreciates John’s kind words, and once he leaves to get John’s food, Charlotte appreciates John’s gesture too. She makes a comment about how men are averse to niceness, and they get irritated when someone calls them nice because they perceive it as a sign of weakness. But Charlotte thinks that being nice is a good quality and more men (or people in general) should try to be nice to one another, because the world is in desperate need of it to counter all the horror that’s being inflicted upon us. John is undoubtedly smitten by Charlotte; he usually has a way with words, but when it comes to Charlotte, he does get speechless (and she reminds him of Rita Hayworth in Gilda). When John calls her “nice,” she does flirt back with him. However, given this is noir-inspired and Charlotte is clearly the femme fatale, there’s a good chance that she has a villainous undercurrent to her character. I guess we’ll know more about that as the show progresses.

John Meets Mrs. Jaquez

John goes to his house in Hollywood Hills to do some boxing practice and stalks Pavich, who is apparently not a senator anymore, but the CEO of a tech company. John follows Pavich all the way to Magellan University and notices that he is probably hiring intellectually gifted people for a purpose that’s still a mystery to him. Given how John really stands out in a university, in his suit and tie, he chooses to leave before he is spotted. He goes Downtown to meet up with Mrs. Jaquez, a relative of Jesus. She is grieving, as is evident from her sunken body language and the mountain of uncleaned utensils and vessels in her sink. With Mrs. Jaquez’s permission, John investigates Jesus’ room, but he seemingly doesn’t find anything substantial there. So, he goes back to Mrs. Jaquez and asks her to identify Ji or the Man in Black; she doesn’t recognize either of them. John asks her about the woman in the photo with Jesus; she says that that’s her daughter and Jesus’ mom, Sandra. Where is she? Mrs. Jaquez has no idea, her best guess is that she’s either peddling drugs or has lost herself to drugs. She reveals that Sandra and Jesus were like best friends. Therefore, there’s a possibility that Jesus got hurt while trying to get Sandra out of the drug business.

Danny Is A Robber

John understands that his questions are beginning to hurt Mrs. Jaquez. Hence, he starts cleaning up her dishes. He is later joined by Mrs. Jaquez, thereby proving how small acts of kindness can bring the most depressed people out of the rut they are stuck in (this is a really emotional moment, and I feel a major reason why it feels authentic is because John is being played by Colin Farrell). Once John steps outside, he sees that the Ez4s’ representative, who has been circling the neighborhood ever since he drove in there, is still hanging around the place. So, he goes up to him, hands him his card, and tells him to request his boss to get in touch with him because he wants to talk about Jesus. After that, John is escorted out of Downtown by the biker department of the Ez4s. He meets up with Danny at his house. Danny seems to be in a hurry because he has to go to work, but John assures him that he won’t take up much of his time. John asks Danny if he has heard about the Ez4s, and given how shocked he is at the insinuation that Ji was involved with a gang, it seems like Danny has been in the dark regarding a lot of stuff from Ji’s life. John senses that Ji is not the only issue in Danny’s life, so he tries to get him to open up about any other problems that he’s facing. Danny humbly requests John to leave and then, moments later, we see Danny performing a robbery with some of his “friends.” Based on their interaction, it seems like Danny has been doing this for a while, which makes his criticism about Ji’s delinquent behavior ring a little hollow.

John Recruits Val

John meets up with Val at the hotel; she reveals that she has stolen some bathrobes from the pool and is gonna sell them on eBay. When John doesn’t express any anger or resentment, Val asks him why he’s treating her with so much benevolence. John says that he sees the potential in her to be something more than a thief, and he wants to exploit that potential to his benefit, while transforming Val into a better human being. Val is impressed by John’s generosity, but she warns him about her shady past. Once John says that he has done some things back in the day that he isn’t particularly proud of, Val agrees to work with him. Val leaves for the day with the promise that she’s gonna start working for John the next day. John retires to his room, which is when he gets a call, supposedly from the boss of the Ez4s. He gives John an address where they can meet, and John immediately takes off.

John Is Gunned Down By The Ez4s 

In the ending of episode 2, en route to the location in Downtown, when John stops at a traffic signal, he’s surrounded by the same bikers that had escorted him out of Downtown and riddled with bullets. The credits roll over the footage of John and his car lying all alone at that traffic stop. Since there’s no one around to help him, it seems like John is going to die, but we know that John has endured worse situations than this. The only difference between then and now is that, in Season 1, he had his fellow alien friends to help him with the medication that his kind needs to recuperate. Does John have access to that stuff in Season 2? I don’t know. He had people to look after him in Season 1. In Season 2, the only people he knows are humans, and none of them know that he’s an alien. I don’t think John is gonna burden Danny with that knowledge. Munzer has too much on his plate already. That leaves us with Val and Charlotte. I don’t think John is gonna risk revealing such vital info to her, because there’s a good chance that she’s gonna cut and run, and John will be left without a professional partner yet again. So, yeah, I think Charlotte’s gonna be the one to help John out of this pickle. And in classic femme fatale fashion, Charlotte will use this info against John in the future. Also, as John recuperates, I think Val is gonna take the reins of the investigation into Ji; I have a feeling she’ll fare better than John because she knows the streets better than him. What are your thoughts on the same? Let me know in the comments section below.

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