Chernobyl episode 2 live stream: Watch online

After a gut-wrenching start, HBO’s Chernobyl miniseries continues tonight with the second installment in this historical drama.

In the previous episode, we saw the beginning of the story and the end: the explosion of the nuclear reactor and the first wave of deaths, and the suicide of Valery Legasov (played by Jared Harris) long after the event itself. Now what’s left is to connect the broken pieces.

Rather than building up to the explosion of the reactor (the event which will obviously define the entire series), the first episode chose to focus on the fallout—no pun intended. If the series was going to be longer, or span multiple seasons, it might have made more sense to explore the events which lead up to the reactor explosion. It could have touched on the design flaws in the reactor itself and the issues with the staff and new test procedures. While it certainly could have been dramatic to dedicate more screen time to setting the scene and stoking the tension, at the end of the day it’s the results of the reactor explosion which matter most to a present-day audience, and so it makes sense to narrow the focus.

The biggest questions facing viewers now are simple: What will happen to the reactor, still on fire and spewing radioactive smoke and ash into the sky? And perhaps more pressingly, what will happen to all the people we watched be exposed to insane amounts of radiation in the series premiere?

It seems safe to assume the show will stick fairly close to the historical facts, but there’s still a lot of room for flexibility within that framework. And like the events themselves, even if we know with certainty what fate awaits a certain character on the show, there’s so much potential tension and agony in following them on the journey to that ultimate end.

The first episode of Chernobyl was fantastic, and the second is bound to dive into the political cover-up, as well as Legasov’s journey from beginning to tragic end.

"Date: Monday, May 13Start Time: 9 p.m. ESTEpisode: “Please Remain Calm”TV Channel: HBOLive Stream: Watch on HBO and HBO Go, as well as Hulu and Amazon Prime."

Chernobyl airs Mondays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO.

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