Troy: Fall of a City | Cast, Plot, Ending, and Season 2 Status

Troy: Fall of a City, co-produced by BBC One and Netflix and aired in 2018, is a miniseries completed in a total of 8 episodes. Here's a rundown of the full cast, the finale ending, and the frequently asked question of whether there will be a Season 2 — spoiler warning included. Let's start by noting that this is a separate work with a different scope of adaptation from the 2004 film Troy, which covers the same Trojan War, or Homer's original Iliad.

Cast and Characters

The main cast is as follows.

In addition, the prophet Cassandra, who plays an important role in the wooden horse warning scene, is played by Aimee-Ffion Edwards. If you follow the ending details below with this cast list in hand, you won't get lost.

Episode 8 Ending: Bringing In the Horse

In the final episode 8, "Offering," the Greek army makes it look as though they have left behind a giant wooden horse and withdrawn. The drama frames the horse as a sacrifice offered to the gods, an adaptation that parallels the earlier scene in which Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia. Then, when grain is discovered inside the horse, the Trojans take it as proof that the war is over and resolve to bring it inside the city.

Andromache and Cassandra oppose this decision and warn of the danger of the horse. But once again, no one believes the words of Cassandra, the prophet. In the end, the horse is brought inside the walls, and the Greek soldiers hiding inside open the city gates during the night, leading to the fall of Troy. King Priam loses his life during the sack of the city.

Helen and Paris, and the Young Astyanax

As the sack begins, Helen turns away from Troy and back toward Menelaus. But immediately afterward, Helen is forced to watch as Menelaus finds Paris and kills him. Helen then returns to being Menelaus's wife, and this ending is portrayed not as a joyful reunion but as a bitter binding together.

The most heavily weighted scene in this episode is the death of Astyanax, the young son of Hector and Andromache. In the story, Odysseus throws the child from the city walls to his death, and this scene is staged by showing it directly on screen. This is a different directorial choice from the Greek tragedy tradition — for example, works like Euripides' The Trojan Women — which chose not to show such deaths directly on stage but to convey them only through a witness's report.

Did Season 2 Ever Happen?

To give the conclusion up front: no Season 2 came out after the 8 episodes. TV listings sites like TVmaze record the series as 'Ended' with only the 8 episodes, and there is no record of the BBC making a separate official cancellation announcement. However, it is clear that since airing in 2018 there has been no news of a follow-up season being produced or scheduled, so you can consider the story effectively concluded with these 8 episodes.

How It Differs from the Iliad

The wooden horse and the sack of the city, the death of Priam, and the murder of Astyanax that this drama depicts are events that do not appear in Homer's Iliad. The Iliad itself ends its story with Hector's funeral, covering neither the wooden horse nor the fall of Troy. The story of the horse and the fall is content found mainly in later traditions, such as the epic cycle transmitted after the Iliad or Virgil's Aeneid. It's best to understand this series as a work that adapts and stitches together both the scope covered by the Iliad and the later traditions. You can check what the Iliad actually covers in the Iliad plot summary, and the origins of the wooden horse itself in the Trojan Horse story.

A Different Work from the 2004 Film Troy

Although both cover the Trojan War, this drama and the 2004 film Troy have different actors and different directions of adaptation. In the film, Brad Pitt played Achilles, while in this drama David Gyasi took on the same role. The film's full plot and its adaptation points compared to the original are covered separately in the Troy film information, so if the two works get mixed up during your search, checking that page as well makes them easy to distinguish.

Related Pages to Read Next

You can find the full plot and ending of the 2004 film Troy in the Troy film information, and the actual scope of the original epic that both this series and the film adapted in the Iliad plot summary. The origins of the wooden horse that brought Troy down in the ending, along with other traditions, can be explored further in the Trojan Horse story.