The following contains spoilers for The Devil Wears Prada 2.
Nearly twenty years after the original became a defining fashion comedy of the 2000s, The Devil Wears Prada finally returns with its long-awaited sequel, The Devil Wears Prada 2, on May 1st.
Legacy sequels are notoriously difficult to pull off. More often than not, they arrive too late, carrying the burden of nostalgia while struggling to justify their own existence.
The Devil Wears Prada 2 throws its characters into a far more grounded and exhausting world — a post-print-media era in which the glory days of traditional publishing are long gone. In a digital world run by corporations and capital, where KPIs, traffic metrics, and algorithms dictate content, where the spectre of unemployment, layoffs, and budget cuts is a constant backdrop, the film hits uncomfortably close to home. Combined with the film’s relentless pace, the whole thing is exhausting in a way that feels all too familiar — because every one of us is living inside that same anxiety.
The story revolves around the struggle to save Runway magazine. At its core, it is a portrait of a dying media landscape — a world in which everything around us is gradually being swallowed up by a handful of people who consolidate power through capital, and capital that cares only about itself. Even when the characters seem to find a solution to their problems, in fact, they are still at the mercy of billionaires.
Saving Runway — or Merely Delaying Its Collapse?
One of the film’s biggest weaknesses is how casually it resolves its central conflict.
When it comes to the actual effort involved in saving Runway, all you get to see is Miranda showing up at Andy’s door with her trademark urgency and simply tells her: “You have some calls to make.” What follows is a montage of Andy looking very busy on the phone, frantically waking people up — and then the problem is simply solved. The means of saving Runway turns out to be nothing more than finding another billionaire backer: Sasha Barnes (played by Lucy Liu), a philanthropist and tech Billionaire Benji’s ex-wife. The film asks the audience to believe that a media acquisition involving a legendary fashion publication can be resolved through a handful of phone calls and networking favors.
And while they appear to have solved the problem, all they have really done is swap one billionaire for another who, for now, seems more palatable and less interventionist, and who promises not to interfere with the magazine’s operations — for the time being.
This breezy logic is not an isolated moment — it runs throughout the film.
Earlier in the film, Andy harasses Sasha Barnes with eighteen voicemail messages. Rather than filing a harassment complaint, the celebrity simply agrees to sit down for an interview, handing Runway an exclusive. And that becomes the defining issue of the movie: everything happens too quickly for emotional or logical weight to settle in.
Romance Subplots That Feel Like Obligations
For a film centered around women navigating power, ambition, and identity, the romantic storylines feel surprisingly hollow.
Emily’s relationship with her billionaire boyfriend Benji (played by Justin Theroux) leans heavily into a “she’s got a daddy now” dynamic. Lavish jewelry gifts replace emotional chemistry, and one particularly uncomfortable lunch scene features Emily must coax and baby a receding-hairlined, stubble-sporting, generally unkempt man lying in her arm, while talking about his nose hair. The relationship’s transactional undertones could not be more visible.
If Benji at least serves some function in the plot, Andy’s inexplicable, chemistry-free romance with an Australian real estate tycoon is tedium taken to its logical extreme. He is neither visually compelling nor dramatically interesting — his purpose seems to be a single argument-and-reconciliation scene with Andy, perhaps to shade in her values, but his presence is so inconsequential that the film would not have suffered in the slightest without him.
As for Miranda: after humbling herself before capital at a dinner party, pleading for the preservation of her life’s work while struggling to keep the displeasure off her face, she returns to her hotel room in quiet despair — where her partner arrives and offers some thoroughly unremarkable words of comfort: “You still have me.” Perhaps it is that line which makes Miranda realise that if she didn’t do something, she would really only have this man left? And so the next morning, she picks herself up and fights back.
It almost feels as though the characters are completing romance subplots out of obligation – everyone seems to be meeting their relationship KPIs.
Fashion That Builds Anticipation Without Payoff
Of course, fashion remains one of the franchise’s greatest pleasures.
The dazzling runway sequences, luxurious costumes, and stylish montages are undeniably entertaining. Watching Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway effortlessly move through couture-heavy set pieces still carries a certain magic.
Yet even the fashion occasionally suffers from the film’s inability to deliver satisfying payoff.
In one scene, Nigel selects outfits for Andy before her visit to Miranda’s home. He pulls together a complete look — but Andy is distracted by a particular dress, and her reaction suggests it is something truly breathtaking. The film builds that expectation sky-high. Then she arrives at the destination wearing a dress — You assume she has yet to change because it reads as nothing more than something she threw on for the journey. It is only when she accidentally stains it that you realise: this is the dress. The one that was supposed to make her shine.
The audience’s expectations are wound up to their highest point — and then nothing is delivered.
Final Thoughts
The Devil Wears Prada 2 tries to juggle too many ideas at once: the collapse of print media, digital-age anxiety, billionaire influence, female ambition, nostalgia, romance, and fashion spectacle. But because it moves at such a relentless pace, very few of those ideas are given enough room to breathe.
The result is a film that feels visually busy yet emotionally and logically thin.
Still, the sequel does manage one genuinely memorable moment.
Near the end of the film, Andy once again wears the “lumpy blue sweater” from the original movie — the cerulean sweater once used by Miranda in one of cinema’s most iconic monologues about fashion and consumer culture.
This subtle callback works because it reflects how much Andy has changed. She is no longer intimidated by the fashion world; she moves through it with confidence and ease. That moment also makes it impossible to ignore: the success of this film owes everything to audiences’ affection for these four actors and their love of the original. The sequel is trading on that goodwill — and not much else.
“That sweater is not just blue, it’s not turquoise, it’s not lapis — it’s actually cerulean.”
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