That’s usually how dramas like this kick off a third act, not the first act of a season’s first episode, so it was apparently quite important for creators Harry and Jack Williams to dive into the story’s meaty thrust.
And the final cut was done extremely well, with the sans-exposition opening going directly from Alice’s final pre-abduction trek into the woods into her emergence (or whoever’s emergence) from those same woods years later.
It was just the right touch of foreboding discomfort without feeling heavy-handed.
As viewers know, The Missing Season 2 centers on military man Sam Webster (David Morrissey) and his wife Gemma (Keeley Hawes), whose daughter Alice went missing in the early 2000s and inexplicably returns 11 years later, unlocking an expansive mystery that crosses both timelines and European borders.