Episode 2 begins with gang members driving around until they notice a young Asian man on the street. They follow him, and one of the gang members exits the vehicle and fatally shoots him.
We then cut to Sugar, who climbs out of a swimming pool and speaks with Val, the woman who stole his car in the previous episode. He unexpectedly offers her a job working for him, leaving her puzzled. Val says she’ll think it over.
Later, Sugar visits Danny at a boxing gym, where Sugar informs him that Ji was last seen stealing drugs from a hospital. Sugar then receives a call and heads to the morgue, where he’s shown the body of the young Asian man who was murdered. Sugar confirms that the victim is not Ji. Sugar is also shown the body of the shooter, who is revealed to be a member of the Los Angeles street gang Ez4. While examining the shooter’s phone, Sugar finds a photo of a frightened Ji crouching down. Sugar realizes the gang is searching for Ji, and concludes they mistakenly killed the wrong guy.
Later that day, Sugar returns to the hospital and asks to review the surveillance footage from the night Ji stole the drugs. The footage reveals that after taking the medication, Ji exited through a stairwell but briefly stopped on the fifth floor. Retracing Ji’s movements, intercut with flashbacks of Ji that night, Sugar discovers that he visited the room of a patient named Jesus Alejandro Jaquez, who has since died. Inside the room, Sugar opens a closet and realizes it is the same place where Ji had hidden—the very closet where the photo of him, frightened and crouching, was taken. Reviewing the surveillance footage once more, Sugar notices a mysterious man dressed in black moving through the hospital at the same time Ji was there, deliberately keeping his face hidden from the security cameras.
That night, Sugar runs into Charlotte again at the hotel bar. The two flirt as they chat, and after Charlotte steps away to take a phone call, Sugar realizes he may have a crush on her.
The following morning, Sugar tails Matt Pavich and learns that the former senator is now the CEO of a new tech company. He follows Pavich to an engineering school, where he watches him meet and shake hands with a professor. From the interaction, Sugar deduces that Pavich is hiring for his company.
Sugar continues investigating Ji’s disappearance by pursuing his next lead: learning more about Jesus Alejandro Jaquez. He tracks down Jesus’s grandmother, who invites him inside. Sugar shows her photos of Ji and the mysterious man from the hospital surveillance footage, but she says she doesn’t recognize either of them. She also reveals that Jesus’s mother, Sandra, is living on the streets and struggling with drug addiction, though Jesus had remained in contact with her. As Sugar leaves the house, he notices a gang member watching him from across the street. He approaches the man and asks him to call his boss so he can speak with the person who took the photo of Ji. Before leaving, Sugar hands the gang member his business card with his phone number.
Afterward, Sugar visits Danny and asks whether he knows anything about the Ez4 gang. The possibility that Ji may be connected to a street gang deeply unsettles Danny, and he abruptly ends the conversation, ushering Sugar to leave. Shortly after, Danny is picked up by a friend. Inside the car, Danny and a group of guys put on masks and carry out a robbery at a nearby store. From a distance, Sugar watches the entire incident unfold from his car.
Back at the hotel bar, Sugar meets with Val and makes another attempt to persuade her to work for him. He writes the weekly salary on a napkin, and after seeing the amount, she accepts the job. Later, while in his room, Sugar receives a call from the gang leader about the photo of Ji, giving Sugar an address.
The episode ends with Sugar driving to the address he was given. While stopped at a red light, two men on a motorcycle pull up beside his car and open fire. As they speed away, they toss Sugar’s business card back into his car. With bullet wounds all over his chest, Sugar lies in his car, struggling to breathe.
Episode 2 of Sugar makes some intriguing discoveries in Ji’s case, though that central mystery continues to overshadow the show’s other plotlines. However, we learn that the dangerous men pursuing Ji are part of a street gang—but not just any ordinary gang. The final moments of the episode reveal just how ruthless they are, showing that they’re capable of taking down even John Sugar, the same man who previously went after sex traffickers in the previous season. And despite the little we see of Pavich in this episode, the reveal that he’s a tech CEO raises new questions, as viewers are left to wonder whether his company’s technology could be used to target aliens such as Sugar. Meanwhile, Sugar begins developing feelings for Charlotte, something entirely new for him, and he forms an unlikely partnership with Val, making for an exciting duo. With the episode ending on such a shocking cliffhanger, the stakes have been raised significantly, setting up for what could be a thrilling Episode 3.
Rating: 8/10