Hanna is a 15-year-old girl living with Erik, the only man she has ever known as her father, in a remote part of a forest in Poland. That is the setup Prime Video sold in 2019, and it is still the best thing about the show. The series ran three seasons and 22 episodes, from March 2019 to November 2021, and it never quite found a second idea as good as its first.
Trailer, via Prime Video.
A Girl Raised in the Polish Forest
David Farr created and wrote Hanna, adapting it from the 2011 film of the same name. Esme Creed-Miles plays Hanna. Mireille Enos plays Marissa, the CIA agent ordered to shut down the program that made her. The premise is a clean, brutal machine. Erik once brought pregnant women into a CIA operation called UTRAX, where the children’s DNA was altered to produce super-soldiers. He fell in love with Johanna, Hanna’s mother, rescued the baby and fled. The CIA then told its on-site agent, Marissa, to close the project and kill every child in it.
That is a strong pilot buried in a familiar one. A girl raised in isolation, trained to survive, hunted by the people who made her. Farr knows the shape of this story and he tells it without much waste. Creed-Miles carries the early episodes on stillness and speed, which is the correct pair of tools for a character who has spent her life in trees and never in a room full of people.
Mireille Enos and the Off-Book Agent
The show’s second engine is Marissa Wiegler, and Enos is the reason the middle seasons hold together. Marissa is not a simple villain. She is the off-book CIA agent in the official synopsis, the one who follows Hanna across Europe and keeps finding reasons not to finish the job. Enos plays her as tired rather than cruel, which makes the pursuit feel like a job someone has been doing too long.
The casting was announced in February 2018, with Enos, Joel Kinnaman and Creed-Miles in the lead roles. Kinnaman’s Erik is the show’s emotional anchor in season one and his absence later is felt. By September 2019, Dermot Mulroney, Anthony Welsh, Severine Howell-Meri, Cherelle Skeete and Gianna Kiehl were joining for season two, with Yasmin Monet Prince and Áine Rose Daly returning from the first. Mulroney’s John Carmichael and Ray Liotta’s Gordon Evans give the back half a colder, more institutional menace.
Three Seasons and One Long Chase
The first episode went up as a time-limited preview on Prime Video on February 3, 2019. The full eight-episode first season arrived on March 29, 2019. Season two followed on July 3, 2020. In July 2020, the series was renewed for a third and final season, which premiered on November 24, 2021.
That is a tidy run by streaming standards, and it is also the problem. Hanna is a chase. Once you have watched a girl outrun trained men in a forest, you have watched the show’s best trick. The later seasons move her into cities, into programs, into other enhanced children, and the tension thins each time. The UTRAX program is a good origin and a poor ongoing plot. Every new asset introduced dilutes the one girl the audience actually came for.
The Numbers Behind the Run
- Created by: David Farr
- Network: Prime Video
- Seasons: 3
- Episodes: 22
- First aired: March 28, 2019
- Last aired: November 23, 2021
- Premiere preview: February 3, 2019
- Season 1 release: March 29, 2019
- Season 2 release: July 3, 2020
- Season 3 premiere: November 24, 2021
- Metacritic: 60/100
- Score: 6.0/10
Creed-Miles Against the Machine
The performance is the argument for watching. Creed-Miles plays Hanna as someone who learned people from a distance and is now forced into close range. She is watchful in a way that reads as animal rather than shy, and the show is smart to keep her quiet in scenes where a lesser series would give her a speech.
The weakness is that Hanna rarely gets to want anything except survival. The premise gives her a father, a mother she never met, and a program that made her. It does not give her a life. Across 22 episodes she is chased, captured, released, chased again. The emotional beats land in season one because Erik is there to push against. After that, Marissa becomes the closest thing to family, and Enos and Creed-Miles do build something real in their scenes together. It is just thinner than the show seems to think.
What the Program Costs the Story
Here is the comparison that matters most for anyone deciding whether to start.
| Element | Season 1 | Seasons 2 and 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Setting | Remote forest in Poland | Cities across Europe |
| Central relationship | Hanna and Erik | Hanna and Marissa |
| Antagonist focus | Marissa, off-book | Carmichael, Gordon Evans |
| New cast | Creed-Miles, Enos, Kinnaman | Mulroney, Welsh, Howell-Meri, Skeete, Kiehl |
| Core tension | Escape | Institutional pursuit |
Season one wins that table. The forest is a better arena than any city the show later visits, because it makes Hanna the expert and everyone else the intruder. Once she is in traffic and hotels, she is just another hunted protagonist in a genre full of them.
Where the Show Sits Against the 2011 Film
Hanna is based on the 2011 film of the same name, and the series inherits the film’s central image without inheriting its compression. A two-hour chase can get away with thin motivation. A 22-episode chase cannot. Farr’s writing is clean and the action is staged with real clarity, but the show keeps restating its premise instead of complicating it.
The genre is listed as Action & Adventure and Drama, and the drama is the weaker half. When Hanna slows down, it tends to explain rather than deepen. The UTRAX program is described, revisited and explained again. What it never becomes is a genuine moral question. These are children who were made, not born, into weapons. The show notices that and then moves on to the next set piece.
The Verdict on Hanna
A 6.0 out of 10 is the right score for a series with a great first season and two diminishing returns. The Metacritic number sits at 60/100, and that matches what the show actually delivers: a strong lead, a strong antagonist, a clean premise, and a long tail that never earns its length.
Watch season one. Creed-Miles and Enos are worth the eight episodes, and the forest material is the sharpest thing Farr wrote for television here. Season two is serviceable. Season three is a farewell that arrives later than it should.
The thing worth noting is how close this came to being better. Hanna has a real performance at its center and a real idea underneath it. What it lacks is the discipline to end when the idea runs out. Three seasons and 22 episodes is not a bloated run by modern standards, but it is longer than this story needed, and the last stretch proves it.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.