Going into this series — a Tribeca official selection from 2025 — after finding it on LinkedIn, I expected something like “The Prestige” book or movie. What I got was something far more nuanced, emotional and not a simple revenge story. Also no dead women. With season two starting in a couple of days, it’s time to review the most recent audio drama from “Wolf 359” creator, Gabriel Urbina, and his tale of magic, frenemies and language with “The Harbingers.”

Hamilton and Burr 2.0

In “The Harbingers” first season, the two leads are the two stereotypical love/hate relationship between grad students in the field of anthropology. Two ideals clashing together. It’s very reminiscent of Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical about rivalry between two founding fathers. It’s slightly tweaked for a more modern audience. Burr believes staying quiet and passive is better than pushing for radical change. Hamilton thinks that without radical movements, nothing would get done toward building a better future. Sounds like modern day political discourse in the United States, right? The two leads have similar beliefs, with Amy Sterling being the more Hamilton-coded character. The male lead, Adam Blackwell, takes Burr’s indecision to act and adds privilege to the equation.

The final scene of episode four where Adam goes over Amy’s head with a group project is handled so well by the actors. You hear the betrayal in Amy’s (Lauren Grace Thompson) voice as she calls Adam an asshole. The confusion from Adam (Andrés Enriquez) over doing something Amy helped to inspire, thinking she’d be proud is also so out of touch you wonder how anyone can be that dense. It’s a classic case of misunderstanding and miscommunication found at one point or another in practically any romantic comedy.

The Harbingers Mystery: Ancient and Present

As noted above the premise of two rival magicians butting heads may sound identical to the one from “The Prestige.” In practice —specifically the dialogue — “The Harbingers” has more in common with “Inception.” If you’re a person who thought Christopher Nolan’s movie about a reverse mind heist was mostly exposition pretending to be dialogue, don’t dismiss this audio drama offhand. In fact, audio may be the only medium where this kind of information-rich dialogue works. Gabriel Urbina’s use of metaphor to explain concepts is masterful. The dialogue sounds organic and keeps the listener engaged.

One example of this is when Adam describes the language of the Harbingers. How transporting a cup of coffee through magical language isn’t as easy as willing the cup to another location. You have to learn the word for coffee and cup. One needs to accurately describe the correct cup so another isn’t transported instead. Keeping the coffee in the cup is another factor of a spell. It’s basically computer code where specificity is not just important but integral to making a piece of software work properly. This only makes sense, given that computer code is sometimes compared to learning a new language in terms of difficulty.

The Subtle Twist with Big Ramifications

Maybe it’s because I listened to this as it released, but starting at episode nine onward the show dipped slightly in my enjoyment. After episode eight, my desire to resume week after week waned until the last couple of episodes. Another reason for a lack of interest could be the approximately two month break from December to February. When it returned, I wasn’t a weekly listener like before. I think I binged like three episodes in a row. Afterward the release dates seemed to get farther apart. If you’re listening to this all the way through in a couple of sittings, you probably won’t have this problem. It’s just the nature of entertainment industry.

What really got me hyped for season two were the final two episodes where the two co-leads’s motivations are flipped on their heads. The best part is scene with the lawyer where their decisions on what to do next flip-flops. It’s great character writing. Like the Hamilton and Burr parallel above, Amy and Adam learn from each other while still staying true to who they are. This kind of motivational twist can easily go wrong. How many times have you experienced a story where the morally good character is secretly the villain. It’s the unreliable narrator cliche as opposed to the trope. I’ll end this review the way the first season does by teasing the city of Atlantis and then cutting to end credits. For me it’s the rating. For you it’s only a couple of days.

Rating: Ground Breaking (9/10 or 4.4/5 Stars)