Arriving in the wake of Prime Video’s rollout of Mike Flanagan’s Carrie, the second season of The Institute—another series about psychic teens based on a Stephen King book—feels in danger of being lost in the shuffle. It has an apparently smaller budget, doesn’t have the same level of viral hype, and is on MGM+, which requires a separate subscription despite also being part of Amazon.

But it’s worth seeking out this intriguing sci-fi thriller, which stars Ben Barnes, Mary-Louise Parker, Jeff Fahey, and an ensemble of younger actors headed up by Joe Freeman and Simone Miller.

Alfie Allen (Game of Thrones) joins the cast for The Institute’s second season, playing a character who introduces a terrifying new threat into a show that already has plenty of them. It’s a concern even us non-psychic types can relate to: AI and its potential for malevolent overreach.

Season one of The Institute followed King’s 2019 sci-fi novel pretty closely. Its younger characters were aged up from tweens to teens, but the story remained basically the same. Young genius Luke Ellis (Freeman) is kidnapped and wakes up in a peculiar facility filled with kids who—like him—are either telekinetic or telepathic, or both. Under the watchful eye of Ms. Sigsby (Parker), they’re put through torturous tests meant to amplify their abilities. When they’re deemed ready, they’re whisked into a different part of the facility where even more terrible things happen.

At the end of season one, we learned that Luke and his friends are just one component of an organization that uses psychics to identify specific people—dubbed “hinges”—whose future actions will trigger apocalyptic events.

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