Antonia Scott was built to beat one killer at a time. In the first season of Red Queen, the Spanish crime thriller that Prime Video adapted from Juan Gómez-Jurado’s bestselling novels, the woman described as the smartest person in the world was pulled out of seclusion in Madrid to find whoever had murdered the son of one wealthy family and kidnapped the heiress of another. The new season, titled Black Wolf (Loba Negra in Spain), takes her out of that duel and out of the capital. Victoria Luengo returns as Antonia and Hovik Keuchkerian as Jon Gutiérrez, and this time the case waits on the Costa del Sol, tangled up with the Russian mafia.

The trigger is a disappearance. Lola Moreno, played by Adriana Torrebejano, is the wife of a man tied to the Russian underworld on the coast, and her vanishing sends Antonia and Jon south. The same story holds a contract killer known only as Black Wolf, played by Javiera Sky, whom the official synopsis presents as a hitwoman working for the mafia who will put Antonia’s intelligence to the test. Producer Focus says the action unfolds mainly in Málaga, and Spanish coverage places the missing-person case in Marbella.

A season that trades one killer for an organisation

The move south is the real premise of the season. A single murderer, however brilliant, leaves a pattern, and patterns are Antonia’s whole advantage: the series built its first case as a contest between two minds, with Jon as the street-level partner at her side. A criminal organisation does not need to be clever in that way. It needs money, loyalty and people paid to do the dangerous part. The synopsis points Black Wolf toward that second kind of problem, and the premise suggests a heroine whose one weapon may be aimed at the wrong target.

The title says as much. The first season was named after Antonia herself: Red Queen is her codename in a secret police project built around minds like hers. The second is named after the woman sent to stop her. That makes Black Wolf the first antagonist in the series defined against Antonia’s gift rather than simply hidden from it; a professional killer’s job is to leave nothing to read. Press materials describe the character as an assassin as cryptic as she is relentless, which on paper is the one profile Antonia cannot out-think in advance.

The novelist who says the show beat his books

Gómez-Jurado has been unusually open about how much he likes the adaptation. “The series has improved on the books,” the writer said in an interview ahead of the new season. He added that series “don’t make themselves”: the story came from him, he said, but the team had filled it with talent and had become his family. For an author whose trilogy became a publishing phenomenon in Spain, that is a public endorsement of the changes the screen version makes.

Loba Negra is the middle book of the Antonia Scott trilogy, between Reina Roja and Rey Blanco. The series follows it in order, and the continuity behind the camera is close to total. Koldo Serra, who co-directed the first season with Julián de Tavira, directs again. Amaya Muruzábal and Salvador Perpiñá created the series, and Dopamine and Focus produce it for Prime Video, the same team that launched the first season with a world premiere at Madrid’s Teatro Fernán Gómez.

Who returns and who joins on the coast

The two leads carry their own recognition into the new case. Luengo starred in Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s police series Antidisturbios, and Keuchkerian, a former boxer, reached a global audience as Bogotá in Money Heist. Around them, Àlex Brendemühl returns as Mentor, Antonia’s former handler in the Red Queen project, with Vicenta N’Dongo, Karmele Larrinaga, Fernando Guallar and Bruno Sevilla also back.

The new names belong to the coast. Féodor Atkine joins as Aslan Orlov and Beka Lemonjava as Yuri, two of the roles on the Russian side of the story. Silvia Abascal and Mauricio Morales join as Inspectors Romero and Belgrano. Torrebejano’s Lola sits between the two worlds, the missing woman whose absence connects them.

Why the Costa del Sol changes the series

The first season’s Madrid was a city of old money and institutions, where the crime came from inside the elite. The Costa del Sol is a different setting for Spanish crime fiction: a coastline of holiday homes, marinas and foreign capital that Spanish news coverage has for years tied to international criminal networks. Moving Antonia there moves the series from a crime that breaks a social order to a crime that is part of a local economy, the kind a whole region has learned to live alongside.

That relocation also fits how Prime Video sells its Spanish originals. When the first season launched, Amazon said its three biggest Spanish titles averaged 80% of their streams outside Spain. A Spanish thriller about a Russian mafia on a coast visited by millions of foreign tourists every year travels easily, and the platform is releasing it worldwide on the same day.

The open question is the one the first season never had to ask. Antonia can read a single mind faster than anyone around her. Whether that is worth anything against an organisation that does not need to hide, on a coast that has made room for it, is something no synopsis can settle before the first episode.

When and where to watch Red Queen Season 2

Red Queen: Black Wolf premieres on Friday, October 2, on Prime Video in more than 240 countries and territories. The second season runs six episodes. The first season’s seven episodes are on the platform for anyone who needs to catch up, and a third season, adapting the final novel, White King (Rey Blanco), has already been filmed according to Spanish press reports, with no release date announced yet.

Red Queen Season 2: quick answers

Is Red Queen based on a book? Yes. The series adapts Juan Gómez-Jurado’s Antonia Scott trilogy: Reina Roja, Loba Negra and Rey Blanco. Season 2 follows the second novel, Loba Negra (Black Wolf).

How many episodes does Red Queen Season 2 have? Six, after the seven-episode first season.

Who plays Black Wolf? Javiera Sky plays the hitwoman known as Black Wolf. Victoria Luengo and Hovik Keuchkerian return as Antonia Scott and Jon Gutiérrez, with Adriana Torrebejano as Lola Moreno.

Where is Red Queen Season 2 set? On the Costa del Sol, mainly in and around Málaga, after a first season set in Madrid.

Will there be a Red Queen Season 3? A third season adapting Rey Blanco has been shot, according to Spanish press; Prime Video has not announced a date.