When “The Wow” aired what turned out to be a season finale (no Chain Finale) In October 2020, it didn’t necessarily feel like we needed more. The series ended with the arrest of Keith Raniere along with all other key players in the NXIVM scandal—his right-hand woman Nancy Salzman, “Smallville” actress and alleged sex slave master Allison Mack, financial backer Claire Bronfman, and more, while its The former members fighting for the cause finally heaved a sigh of relief. In real life, we saw the rest at play, with Raniere sentenced to 120 years in prison.
That could have been the end of the story, but as we know now, it certainly wasn’t. Raniere’s final words from that finale foreshadowed what was to come, though perhaps not in the way he intended: “There are many ways to present a documentary. Your side is only the top layer, and depending on what you are willing to present as the truth, it can go very deep.”
“The Vow” Season 2 (or “The Wow Part 2” as it’s titled) almost takes it as a challenge, and presents exactly the side Raniere probably wanted to present. Many of his constant supporters appear throughout the season and actually offer few reasonable explanations as to why Raniere’s teachings attracted him, and continue to appeal to him. One man fully believes that Salzman and Raniere fixed their Tourette’s, and there is considerable evidence that they did. These people say that their lives changed when they started taking classes with ESP and NXIVM, and they have never been happier. They believe that Raniere was merely consensual sex, and that women who were branded as members of the secret sub-society dos all voluntarily acquired those brands. They feel that the good done by NXIVM outweigh the bad, and they will continue to fight for Raniere’s release.
And then as some of these people may have convinced you that there may be suspicion here, a new terror has emerged. A woman was jailed for liking a boy other than Raniere. Raniere had sex with a teenager. He terrorized an entire immigrant family. Some of his ramblings may have been incorporated into legitimately helpful teachings by Salzman, but he was also a monster. Both things can be true.
Talking about Salzman, she is the star of this entire season. We inevitably see her break down on camera as she struggles with what she knew, what she didn’t know and what she never understood about her years working with Raniere. She feels brutally honest, and she’s far from the star of those shoddy educational ESP videos that still permeate the entire series. She is a broken-hearted woman who was not only manipulated by Ranier herself, but who was also revealed to have sexually abused her daughter, Lauren, along with a large number of other women. He apparently promised all those kids, but only after he’d lost the weight or become the best version of himself, or satisfied them in some other arbitrary way. When a judge tells Salzman that he is responsible for what happened to her daughters as part of the NXIVM, she bursts into tears.
Salzman really solves a lot of mysteries here. Rainiers aren’t always attractive, but Salzmans are. She’s warm and funny and cheerful, and she just wants to help, even when she’s doing Raniere shit. She feels dependable, and you can see why her presence would make young, beautiful women feel more trusting of Raniere. You can also see how she is feeling and is very sorry, and very lost. ESP was his whole life, and now he has to build a whole new one in the face of his prison sentence.
While Salzman almost could have been his own documentary, there is much more to uncover here beyond his involvement. While NXIVM’s curriculum seemed to help a lot of people on the surface, it was inherently flawed because it told people that whatever they did or whatever happened to them was a choice. Coughing when sick was an option. Tics were an option for people with Tourettes. Fear was an option. Bad things happened to people only because they allowed them. To some extent it worked. But at another level, it took away all options, and created a group that structured itself as master and slave. You can achieve your goals only when you have no choice but to achieve them, that’s the principle.
Salzman and the few remaining fans of NXIVM hate the fact that the program is now known to be a sex cult, which is justified. The series does a great job of clarifying this and presenting all the ways that it isn’t, in fact, just a sex cult. But the series spends enough time on the stories of Raniere’s victims to remind you that even though there were positivity in the program, nothing could really go better than giving one man so much power over people’s entire lives. As many say throughout the series, it wasn’t necessarily about sex; It was all about control. And in a way, this second season became the one controlling NXIVM’s narrative. It was a more complicated situation than is easily explained in a nine-hour season.
Season 1 brought the spotlight to those who dropped out before the fall, and Season 2 explores what happened to the people who got caught up in it. While the first season is really essential to understanding the second, the second feels like a more substantial piece of the story—less salty, more balanced, but still sad and frightening all the same.
“The Wave Part Two” will air on HBO and HBO Max starting with new episodes Monday, October 17.
