Hulu's 'The Season' Channels 'Crazy Rich Asians' Energy
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- "The Season" is a Hulu-bound Hong Kong drama created by Yalun Tu, framed by Variety as a spiritual successor to 2018's "Crazy Rich Asians," which grossed $239M worldwide on a $30M budget but never received a sequel.
- Cola Pierce (Jessie Mei Li), an aspiring banker from Michigan, is the outsider surrogate inserted into Hong Kong's elite by self-made financial adviser Carrie Shen (Celina Jade); Cola harbors an ulterior motive tied to a recent wrong against her family.
- The story orbits Christopher and Fiona Hext (Toby Stephens and Karena Lam), whose family "practically invented colonialism" — Christopher openly admits their fortunes were "built on opium and subjugation."
- The Season toggles between English and Cantonese, treating Hong Kong's skyline as "practically a character," with scenes ranging from noodle shops and Lamma Island's seafood market to yacht-filled summer boating events.
- The review flags uneven execution: high-society set pieces carry clunky names like "1920s Shanghai Gala" and "White Collar Knockout" (a charity boxing match), and many line deliveries are described as stilted.
- Variety contrasts "The Season" with Lulu Wang's 2024 "Expats" — the earlier show took a "probing, cinematic eye" to Hong Kong's elite and the immigrant labor behind it, while "The Season" is lighter, exploring class divides through Cola's tragic backstory rather than a realist portrait of figures like house manager Gloria (Xyza Cada).
Why it matters: For viewers choosing summer TV, Variety's verdict is mixed but specific: skip 'The Season' for plot and dialogue, watch it for the most atmospheric Hong Kong production on streaming right now. For Hulu, the show extends a string of internationally-set originals competing with Netflix's 'Expats' for prestige global drama territory, with its colonial-wealth subtext giving it more thematic bite than its soapy surface suggests.
