Review of Midnight at the Pera Palace / Pera Palas'ta Gece Yarısı Season 2

If you’re new here and found this blog through the mysterious powers of the Internet, welcome! My name is Ashley, and I’m a dedicated reader and movie watcher who thought to turn this website into a little digital archive of sorts. I was watching and reading so much that I wanted to keep track of it all, so I began blogging as a way to keep these books as memories somewhat forever.

That said, I recently fell into a period of unemployment, and this blog was a solace for me. Not only was it a way to make a little bit of money when there was nothing else coming my way really, but I found, after getting my finances in order, that I enjoyed sitting down to write blog posts when I had nothing else to do in my day.

If you like this review in the end, feel free to click around. This is my digital home, so I’m happy to have you here.

When I was working as a film and television critic at a national outlet, I was creating a handful of articles here and there about Turkish television. I was curious about several entries on the list, and I feel like I’ve been having a moment when it comes to watching Turkish shows. It helps that I studied Turkish at one point though!

I recently posted the review for season one of Midnight at the Pera Palace, so that should be live on the blog by the time this review goes up. I watched them together over the course of two weeks, as each season is only eight episodes long and can easily be binge watched if you have some time.

Enough rambling—let’s get into the review. We don’t want to bore you with the details!

After the events of season one, Esra goes back in time to the 1940s to look for her mother.

For those who can’t remember the ending of the first season, season two opens up in 1995, when Esra has just found a photograph of herself from the 1940s. This unlocks the quite the urge for her to go back in time again, through the Pera Palace, and find out the truth of her origins and family members.

So Esra does that, despite Ahmet openly telling her that she needs to stop messing with time. The more she goes back into the past, the more she’s going to alter the future. He knows that, but she doesn’t listen to him and goes back in time anyways because she just has to figure out the truth behind her life.

They end up in 1941, in a neutral Turkey during World War II. For those who don’t know their history, Turkey was largely neutral through the events of World War II, but then got sucked into the war through its alliances with the Allies. So it ended up on the Allies’ side.

Anyways, Esra is wandering the past trying to find out who her mother is. We see how the characters are more connected to each other through familial relationships, as well as how interacting with them in the past gives some sort of closure.

We do see the consequences of messing with time when there are more episodes in the series, especially as the plot thickens. Similar themes to the first season emerge, but then there are some new plot lines introduced throughout the course of this season as well.

I found the plot to be thickest when Halit, who has somehow discovered the time travel element, rolls up to 1941 to search for his lost love Esra. There are some more nuanced reasons as to why these two probably shouldn’t be together, and she needs to stop going in the past, but this wouldn’t make an entertaining show if we ignored these parts.

Overall Thoughts

If we’re going to be honest, I thought that this season was a little messy. I really enjoyed the first season a lot, which is why I even tried to watch it all the way through to the second season.

I think for me the show was starting to lose some of its magic in this season, and the latter half of the series was a tad difficult to get through for me. I wanted to quit several times because it felt like I was starting to predict what was happening, and I’m very much a plot person.

Regardless, if you love the show, feel free to let me know why! Our taste might just be different at the end of the day, which is completely fine. Taste and what we love is so subjective at the end of the day. Neither of us are wrong.

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