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Warning: Contains spoilers for Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End.Not long afterFrieren: Beyond Journey’s Endcompleted its historic first season, it was announced that a second season was officially in development. Season 2 is currently set to premiere in January 2026, and with how great season 1 was, season 2 will surely be just as good, if not better.
Frieren: Beyond Journey’s Endseason 2will be an amazing season of television, but unfortunately, it won’t be without its issues. As great asFrierenis, the series has drawn some controversy for how it handled its villains, and with the material that season 2 is bound to adapt,Frieren: Beyond Journey’s Endseason 2 is poised to make one of the anime’s biggest issues even worse. Naturally, the entire issue is nothing but overblown, but if anything, that makes the possibility of it affecting season 2 even worse.
Why Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End Has Been Drawing So Much Controversy
Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End’s Biggest Controversy Explained
The main reasonFrieren: Beyond Journey’s Endhas been drawing so much controversy is because of its depiction of demons. While it’s nothing new for demons to be the villains of a fantasy story, what makes the demons inFrierenspecial isn’t that they’re evil by choice or because they were raised that way; demons inFrierenare biologically predisposed toward eating humans and physically incapable of empathy, essentially making them a special type of animal, more than anything.
That idea should be pretty straightforward, but some fans didn’t see it that way. Demons, like many characters, display clear signs of intelligence and society, something that wouldn’t make sense if they were just animals, and because of that, many people refuse to accept the idea that demons are objectively evil, which has caused Frieren and other characters’ indiscriminate hatred of them to feel far less noble than the story makes it seem.
That, in turn, has led to another major issue: it’s common for fantasy stories to use fantasy races as metaphors for real-life races, especially when they’re being depicted in a negative light, so for many,Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End’s depiction of demonsas a race of evil people that can be killed on sight has been interpreted as a metaphor for real-life racism. It’s an incredible leap of logic, and unfortunately, it persists over a year later.
Why Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End Season 2 Will Make Its Controversy Even Worse
What To Expect From Frieren Season 2
It’s hard to ignoreFrieren’s demon controversy, and season 2 will only make it worse. Assuming season 2 is the same length asFrieren: Beyond Journey’s Endseason 1, season 2 will end after adapting a few chapters of volume #13, meaning the main arc it will cover will be the El Dorado arc, which sees Frieren and others fighting against Macht, the strongest of the Seven Sages of Destruction.
The problem with that comes from how Macht is written. Everything in the El Dorado arc stems from Macht’s earnest attempts at trying to understand human emotions, despite being a demon, but the arc ends with Macht being told he’s just a monster and then having to be killed. In the end,Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End’s El Dorado arc reinforces the idea that demons are incapable of human emotions, and when season 2 adapts that, it will only further ignite the controversy surrounding how the anime depicts demons.
Why Frieren’s Biggest Controversy Doesn’t Make Any Sense
The Biggest Problems With Criticizing Frieren
As big asFrieren’s demon controversy is, the issue is nothing but overblown. While demons are more complex than just being mindless animals, the story has repeatedly made it clear that they are incapable of processing human emotions and can only imitate them at best. Many fans don’t like that idea, but if that’s explicitly what’s being said in the story, then there isn’t a point in arguing against it.
More importantly, of course, is the racism allegory people try to make. Not once hasFrierenshowcased any themes for its story aside from standard fantasy JRPG themes, so as it stands,there’s no merit in acting likeFrieren: Beyond Journey’s End’s depiction of demons is a metaphor for racism in any way. Sometimes, something that happens in a fantasy story has no real-life themes behind it, and fans’ inability to accept that has marredFrieren’s reputation for no good reason.
Will Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End Season 2 Be Ruined By Its Controversy?
How Big A Deal Is Frieren’s Demon Controversy?
All of the controversy plaguingtheFrierenanimeis hard to justify, but that doesn’t mean season 2 will be immune to it. With how strong the controversy remains after all this time, it will still be plenty prevalent by the time season 2 starts, and with how Macht is written, if anything, season 2 will see the anime marred by the demon controversy more than ever before.
Ideally, though, that won’t happen. For starters, as much as Macht’s arc might reinforce the controversy, the main takeaway is supposed to be that Macht is a tragic figure, as no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t overcome his natural instincts as a demon, aside from the smallest bit of camaraderie he felt with Gluck, so if anything, season 2 should be respected for the more complex way in which it handles the issue.
Above all else, season 2 is still half a year away, so even with how big the controversy has become, ideally, that will be enough time for it to die down before the content of season 2, itself, finally puts it to bed. Considering how greatFrieren: Beyond Journey’s Endseason 2 will be visually and narratively, that would be the best to hope for, and hopefully, that will become a reality when season 2 finally premieres.
