Why is Takeshi Kovacs “The Last Envoy” in Altered Carbon?

To understand the concept of “The Last Envoy,” we must first understand some of the mythology of the Netflix series. At the center of Altered Carbon is a future where humans are spread across many planets, but this has given them a unique logistics problem⁠—how to move people quickly and efficiently from one world to another.

Their solution to this is to create cortical stacks (known as Stacks)⁠—hard drives with people’s consciousness downloaded onto them in a form known as a Digital Human Freight or DHF. DHF can be transmitted from the Stacks into another location on another world in a process known as needlecasting.

Needlecasting, however, has a big problem. Having one’s consciousness thrown from one location to another causes massive disorientation in the person who has been needlecast. This had bad effects on civilians, but had even worse implications for the military, who needed to be ready to fight straight away on whatever world they found themselves.

To counteract this problem, the military created Envoys, a special force trained by the U.N. Protectorate not to feel any disorientation after needlecasting.

Kovacs was one of these Envoys. 250 years later, during the events of Altered Carbon, Kovacs is believed to be the last of these Envoys, hence the title of “The Last Envoy”.

As The Last Envoy, Kovacs has some unique abilities not shared by other members of the Altered Carbon cast, especially due to his work with Quellcrist Falconer (Renee Elise Goldsberry). Worried that the Stack technology was only going to be available to the rich, essentially consigning all poor people to death and giving all of the wealthy immortality, there was an uprising against the Protectorate.

Kovacs was part of the rebellion against this, and as part of Quell’s training he learned to use his immunity from needlecasting for other skills, like not feeling the effects of torture and heightening his perception. This allows the so-called “Last Envoy” to be the kind of mystery-solving super soldier that we see in Altered Carbon’s two seasons.

Altered Carbon Season 2 is streaming now on Netflix.