One of the great strengths of the Mystery Road series has been its ability to distil complex social relationships, with deep historical roots in racism, into compelling dramatic narratives. Mystery Road: Origin Season 2 continues this work of taking a scalpel to aspects of Australian society that hide uncomfortable truths but, unlike the previous seasons, in which Detective Jay Swan confronts a violent criminal underbelly, this season shifts focus to explore the more ‘respectable’ violence embedded in the health and welfare systems, in a country town where First Nations residents live alongside those who were instrumental in enforcing the policy of assimilation.

From the first moment of season two, it is clear that Detective Jay Swan’s new posting, the timber town of Loch Iris, is a place where bad things happen. A young boy is running desperately through the forest, chased by someone – we don’t know who. Shadows flit rapidly across the trees, underscored by claps of thunder that ramp up the sense of threat. Jump ahead thirty years to the year 2000 and another young boy, Swayze (Aswan Reid), is fleeing out of the forest, crashing through a gate and almost wiping Jay out with his frantic driving. Swayze is terrified but won’t talk – the first of many mute witnesses in the town. Things unsaid simmer in menacing undercurrents in Loch Iris, in lingering after-glances, meaningful pauses in conversations, and tense encounters witnessed from a distance. The unease resonates in Vincent Goodyer’s unsettling score, which comes to the fore in key moments in low drones, often discordant synthesiser notes that feel like understated wailing, and a low beat that builds momentum and tension.

Some dark secret is threatening the kids in this town, but Jay’s attempts to unravel the clues are blocked by everyone, especially the local sergeant, Simmo (Robyn Malcolm), a burnt-out cynic who spends her days drinking at the pub and going fishing. She tells Jay, ‘We do things differently here. The town looks after itself.’ To her, Jay is just ‘that blackfella cop … a traitor to the brotherhood [who] got your last boss locked up’.

Unlike the stark, barren landscapes stretched out flat across the horizon of the arid lands in previous seasons, the landscape in season two builds a more sombre mood, the light more muted. The giant karri trees of the south-west forests of Western Australia tower over the town, closing the space in. Much of what is going on here is happening in the shadows. Jay, too, is more sombre. Gone is the sweetness of the earlier prequel. He is harder, more apprehensive, suspicious of everything. He has started to embody some of the gestures of the older Jay (Aaron Pedersen) – the way he moves, his body poised like a coiled spring; the way he observes everything around him, his intensity concentrated in the tautness of his eyes and face: his brusque, uncompromising manner. Mary (Tuuli Narkle), Jay’s partner, tells him: ‘this town could be good for us. You just have to learn to trust it’, but Jay sees the town through the trauma his work has dealt him. And he sees details Sergeant Simmo does not want to know about as he tries to unlock the secrets of what is happening in Loch Iris.

Mark Coles Smith as Detective Jay Swan and Robyn Malcolm as Simmo (courtesy of Bunya Productions)

In the visual language of the screen, clues can be embedded cinematically, rather than planted through narrative devices. A skewed, asymmetrical frame can destabilise the mood of a scene, throwing the viewer off balance in a subconscious recognition that something is awry. In the opening episode of season two, this skewed frame is a long shot looking down the darkened corridor of Saint Joseph’s Hospital, with the diminutive frame of Sister Kerry, an elderly Catholic nun, standing stock still on the extreme left at the end of the corridor. She looks off left to what we learn is a locked door marked ‘No Admittance’. This door, we discover, leads to a wing of the hospital that was the old Saint Joseph’s Home, a mission home that closed in the 1970s and now holds the Native Admissions records from those days, kept strictly confidential. Sister Kerry used to oversee the young Indigenous kids housed here, including Mary’s mother, with ruthless discipline: ‘more belts than hugs’. The only thing Sister Kerry will say is: ‘It can take a lifetime to figure out the difference between good intentions and doing what’s right.’ Nobody wants to talk about the old mission, ‘they just want to forget it’. But this town has long memories. Mary’s work at the hospital gives her a chance to get into the records and uncover the dark memories they hold.

For anyone familiar with the history of Western Australian missions, the name ‘Saint Joseph’s Home’ inevitably evokes Saint Joseph’s Native School and Orphanage at New Norcia, notorious even among other mission homes for its abuse of Aboriginal children. With echoes of this historical context, this season unfolds against a backdrop of child removal policies that continue – albeit in different forms – assimilation policies that led to the Stolen Generations. Here, the historical frame set up by the opening scene slips into sharper focus. Donny, the boy being pursued thirty years earlier, in the 1970s, was a child at the mission. Mary’s mother grew up in the mission but fled the town, and she would never talk about why. Now, in 2000, a young mother Jessie (Rarriwuy Hick) fights for the return of her child, who has been taken by the welfare system. ‘They’re taking away more of our kids than they ever did before,’ she shouts. This narrative is set against the contemporary situation in which, according to the World Report 2025 by Human Rights Watch, ‘the number of Aboriginal children in out-of-home care in WA has skyrocketed over the past two decades.’

In this season, criss-crossing storylines explore the diverse circumstances that entangle Indigenous kids and families in the welfare system, and the web of connections between the welfare and health systems. Even Jay and Mary get ensnared by this monster with many tentacles.

The scripting in season two is a little more uneven than in earlier seasons – occasionally the dialogue is less nuanced and a few moments are overly reliant on the music to carry the dramatic impact – but, directed by Wayne Blair and Jub Clerc, the characterisation is strong and, as is usual for Bunya Productions, the casting and performances are superb. In addition to Mark Coles Smith and Tuuli Narkle, who won AACTA awards for best actor in a drama for season one, standouts of this season are Robyn Malcolm as Sergeant Simmo, the young Aswan Reid (The New Boy [2023]) as Swayze, Shantae Barnes-Cowan as Lana, who carries a natural gravitas that makes her compelling to watch, and Luke Carroll, who is outstanding as the damaged and disturbed Joey, a casualty of the mission system who sees everything and carries many secrets.

Fans of Mystery Road will be intrigued by this season’s focus on the relationship between Jay and Mary. We start to see the tensions emerging between the vulnerability of this relationship and Jay’s work that makes him ever more guarded. These pressures foreshadow the bitter break we witness in later seasons.

Season one of Mystery Road: Origin was the most watched program on ABC iView in its eighteen-year history, and the Mystery Road franchise has won multiple awards since its first iteration in 2013. It’s clear that, despite the toxic political rhetoric of recent years, many viewers are hungry for the franchise’s powerful, hard-hitting dramas.

Mystery Road: Origin screens on ABC-TV and iView.