Queen Sono
on one of my favorite cancelled shows
The first episode opens with Pearl Thusi walking on a beach in Zanzibar. I was hooked before she threw a single punch. Something deep in me needed to witness an African woman beat the living out of people in service of a larger mission. Thusi plays Queen Sono who is a morally complicated character. What makes Thusi fun to watch is the charisma she possesses to portray this otherwise morally complicated and deeply traumatized character. Queen Sono bends the rules. She cuts corners. Her anger is righteous. She is relentless in her pursuit of information and the justice she will deliver with said information. She tells her coworker that if she is going to be a b*tch, she should commit. Queen doesn’t fear anything but vulnerability.
Queen Sono was Netflix's first African original series, shot across South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe. Creator Kagiso Lediga wanted to show the Africa I never saw on screen: modern, complex, and gorgeous. What made this show extraordinary was that it wasn’t just another spy thriller. Queen Sono wove together political commentary about activism and apartheid's lingering shadow, romance that complicated loyalties, and action that felt grounded in real geopolitical stakes. The villains were neocolonial adversaries—Russian private military contractors looking to sink their claws into the continent's resources and their allies within South Africa that benefited from the exploitation of their own people.
The soundtrack was perfect. You can find it on Apple Music. I still listen to it to this day six years after watching this series. The outfits balanced high fashion with spy practicality. The chemistry between Queen Sono and Shandu (Vuyo Dabula) crackled with the tension between institutional loyalty and revolutionary idealism. But it was the grief that gutted me. Queen's PTSD manifests as visual "bubbles" when she's overwhelmed, it’s a visceral depiction of how trauma lives in the body. Her mother, an anti-apartheid activist was assassinated in front of her when she was a child, and this becomes the main source of her motivation and the justification behind all of her behavior.
Netflix renewed it for Season 2, then cancelled it in November 2020, blaming pandemic production complications but we deserved more than six episodes. Seeing shots of daily life in Johannesburg made me look up flights during COVID. This is the kind of television that inspires young Africans to see themselves as connected to the larger project of liberation. It’s simply brilliant. I felt the same way about Get Millie Black which was written by the iconic Marlon James and how it dealt with Jamaica. I felt the same way watching Arday on YouTube which was the first show shot in Mogadishu since the civil war. And I felt the same way watching Atlanta. I’m African like that.
Queen Sono dealt with vengeance and power and it showcased what African storytelling can become when given the budget and platform. And now it's gone, leaving us with a cliffhanger and the bitter knowledge that we may never see its like again. Sometimes I still think about what Season 2 could have explored. Mostly, I just miss it. If you need a quick watch, I recommend Queen Sono. It’s only six episodes and it’s worth your time.