Inspired by Roberto Saviano's novel – previously adapted into the feature GOMORRAH by Matteo Garrone in 2008 – season two of GOMORRA (sold in English-speaking territories as GOMORRAH) spends its first episode tying up loose ends and unraveling other threads from the previous season's finale with Sevastano clan head Don Pietro (Fortunato Cerlino) in hiding in Calabria after being busted out by trusted second Malammore (Fabio De Caro) during a prison transfer after months of faking mental deterioration, his bullet-riddled son Gennaro (Salvatore Esposito) is clinging to life in the hospital, and one faithful Sevastano clan member Ciro (Marco D'Amore) has formed an alliance with Salvatore Conte (Marco Palvetti) – having assassinated all of Gennaro's men and left him in a coma – and proposed a free market model in which the dealers buy from Conte and run their territories autonomously. A year later, Gennaro has returned from another trip to Honduras to settle some old scores and intercept the drug supply before heading home.

With his assets frozen, Don Pietro finds himself having to do deals with equally desperate sources, including one who is assassinated right in front of him. With Don Pietro having realized that he cannot rely to Gennaro in order to reclaim what is his, and Gennaro realizing that he and his father will never agree on how to get the job done, the two part ways with Pietro leaving Malmmore and his other surviving senior officials as his eyes and ears while Gennaro to form a partnership with builder Don Giuseppe (Gianfranco Gallo) which includes a socially-advantageous relationship with the man's daughter Azzurra (Ivana Lotito, LETTERS TO JULIET). Conte has grown tired of his current arrangement with his main sellers – Ciro and Rosario (Lino Musella) who bought their way in by hijacking an armored truck and robbing a bank, Marinella (Denise Capezza), and coke-cutting brothers Prince (Antonio Folletto) and Gypsy (Gianluca Di Gennaro) – and uses his twisted sense of religiosity to side with the church when local priest causes a fuss with anti-drug campaign that puts Prince and Gypsy out of business and waits for them to strike back as an excuse to get rid of Ciro; but Conte's own actions against one of his own men who insults his girlfriend – transsexual but otherwise his idealized vision of the Madonna – could sign his own death warrant. Meanwhile, Gennaro has formed a new gang, with a number of Ciro's former rising to prominence, and Ciro must find a way to work with his enemy in order to avoid an all-out gang war while Don Pietro must risk capture to return to Naples when he feels power slipping out of his hands.