The Devil Wears Prada 2: Miranda is back. The devil is not.
The Usual Suspects gives us one of cinema’s most enduring lines. Kevin Spacey, playing Roger “Verbal” Kint, says, “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist.” It rang true then. It rings true now, and not as a compliment.
Because the greatest trick The Devil Wears Prada 2 pulls is persuading you, on twenty years of goodwill the original earned and this one is cashing in, that Miranda Priestly is still in the room, before the script quietly confirms that she is not. This is not Keyser Söze’s sleight of hand. This is diminishing. The wicked we loved is gone.
The cameos come fast and land softly. Law Roach’s appearance is too brief and a missed opportunity, because he should have been the costume designer here. With his standard, this sequel would be less sequins and more story.
Consider how much the world has shifted since Andy Sachs first met the clackers in the hallowed halls of Runway magazine. When she arrived in 2006, George W. Bush was in his second term. Since then, we have lived through the first Black president, a reality star in the Oval Office, a pandemic that reset the world, the first female vice president, and a political return few predicted. Twenty years of tectonic cultural change, and what this sequel asks us to care about urgently is whether a fashion magazine can find a corporate lifeline.
That is not an unworthy question. It is simply not a glamorous one. And glamour was the original covenant. It is now broken.
Miranda and Nigel are steering a stripped down ship, a skeleton crew on a rowboat that was once a superyacht. Emily, long since thrown overboard, resurfaces as a senior executive at Dior. “Retail is the only sector of the luxury market making money right now,” she tells Andy, who has returned to Runway as features editor, tasked by publishing powers to save Miranda from herself. The student is not just surpassing the teacher. She has been assigned to resuscitate her.
This is where the film lives, and where it most consistently loses its nerve. Miranda flies coach, can no longer read the room, and answers a summons to the cafeteria. Yes, seriously. A position at Coach surfaces for another main character. It is unclear whether this is meant as punishment or punchline, but either way, it reveals exactly where the film’s ambitions flatten.
The first Prada created a roped off world where taste was currency and the fashion closet functioned as confessional. This sequel does not rebuild that world, so it settles for its apocalypse. Journalism is dead and magazines no longer matter.
We already knew that.
During the press tour, Anne Hathaway repeatedly offered some version of “we waited until we had something to say.” That is precisely the problem. When you transform a mediocre roman à clef into iconography, you risk confusing popularity with platform. We did not return for a reminder of reality. We came for one liners that cut and fashion that heals. What we receive instead is dialogue with the staying power of a day old onion bagel.
The film briefly recovers when Andy stops running and begins learning the discipline of a senior magazine editor, not a content creator. A great editor knows something matters before an algorithm confirms it. It is a finely tuned discernment. A studied skill.
Think Polly Mellon. Edward Enninful. Andre Leon Talley. Franca Sozzani. Grace Coddington. Eunice Johnson. Constance White. Margaret Zhang. The editors who built the standard.
Which is why Miranda’s best line is also the film’s clearest moment. Looking at Emily, now funded and formidable, she says with absolute coldness, “You are not a visionary. You are a vendor.”
But now, so is Miranda.
The devil did not need to convince the world she did not exist. The sequel managed that on her behalf.
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