Áine (it's still pronounced more or less like "Anya") has made considerable strides in putting her life back together after suffering a nervous breakdown. She's started a new romance - though, a little awkwardly, it's with the father of one of her students - and is slowly forming a genuine friendship with her flatmate.
This is not to say that she doesn't still stumble into a few misadventures. The new relationship - while definitely overall a positive - certainly has a few ups and downs. But overall, it's more Áine's sister Shona who finds herself drifting into a potentially tempestuous situation.
The second season of The Way Up picks up where the first left off. It is overall a slightly lighter set of episodes this time around. It is much less confronting series in terms of Áine's mental health, which seems significantly improved. This is not to say that it doesn't still have its more serious and sombre episodes - notably the final episode deals with the suicide of a secondary character.
This final episode also foreshadows the arrival of COVID, essentially establishing that the show is set a year or so before it originally aired. Presumably if a third season is released (none has yet been confirmed, as far as I know) it will deal witrh the impacts - or possibly after-effects - of the pandemic and how long periods of lockdown impact the primary characters and their relationships.
Those relationships and characters remain the core of the show, particularly Áine and Shona's sisterly bond. The two women almost always have several scenes together in each episode, and their close relationship is convincing and entertaining. Their respective romantic entanglements are perhaps a smidgen more classically sit-com-esque in their depiction, but they still make for engaging drama and comedy.
A fine show; I hope we will see a third season.
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