The Devil Still Wears Prada

It is very difficult to write a sequel for a movie with an already perfect ending. The Devil Wears Prada 2 (2026) perfectly exemplifies a film that, unfortunately, could not deliver on the splendor of the original. Where The Devil Wears Prada (2006) was a witty satire, perfectly encapsulating the glamour of pre-social media fashion, the 2026 sequel feels like a tired, overly self-aware echo, attempting a heavier examination of print media’s decline. While that contemporary update sounds smart on paper, it mostly results in a cluttered script that lectures more than it entertains, with forced relevance and subplots that go nowhere. The devil, it turns out, now wears business casual and worries about declining ad revenue.

Twenty years after walking away from Runway magazine in Paris, Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) has built the serious journalism career she always wanted. Leaving Runway has opened numerous doors in the journalism world for her, and now, Andy is about to accept a prestigious journalism award when she is abruptly fired from her position as an investigative journalist via text message due to the company downsizing. The movie doesn’t sugarcoat this. Andy delivers a powerful speech about the state of journalists in the modern world, hired and fired at the whim of billion-dollar corporations. Her words catch the attention of Irv Ravitz (Tibor Feldman), CEO of Runway magazine’s parent company Elias-Clarke, who quickly offers her a new job as Runway’s new features editor in order to alleviate a controversy involving the magazine’s praise of an unethical fabric supplier. 

The Devil Wears Prada 2 makes one thing very clear: journalism is not what it once was. Andy arrives on her first day back at Runway and quickly realizes that it has wildly changed in 20 years. Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), once the terrifyingly formidable editor-in-chief of Runway, is a shell of her former self, quiet and limited in her ability to truly influence fashion. Everybody has realized that the industry has fractured. Traditional print media has hemorrhaged influence and digital platforms have democratized and cheapened taste-making, while influencer culture has produced a new power class that dictates beauty trends through algorithms and likes.

The film’s plot quickly spirals away from its original premise, with multiple confusing subplots that ultimately end up nowhere. Miranda threatens to fire Andy from her new position after numerous unsuccessful articles, and Andy fabricates a Hail Mary interview with prominent billionaire and philanthropist Sasha Barnes (Lucy Liu). There’s an issue, however, as Sasha hasn’t given public interviews for three years, and Andy has zero ways to contact her. This doesn’t end up being a plot issue, however, as not even 10 minutes later, Andy has safely gotten the interview (through unclear means) and maintained her job at Runway. Sasha remains forgotten and unimportant for a majority of the rest of the film, which is incapable of following a single premise. Another inconsequential plotline follows the state of Runway magazine after CEO Irv Ravitz has an unexpected heart attack at a gala and his son Jay Ravitz (B.J. Novak) takes over Elias-Clarke. Jay Ravitz is presented as a stereotypical “tech bro” and becomes the film’s quasi-villain as he aims to restructure the company under the guise of cost-cutting; namely, he fires Runway employees he deems too expensive, and worst of all, he forces Miranda to fly economy, which is presented as the worst possible outcome of this situation and frames his restructuring as unserious, ultimately throwing him away again after another half hour of screentime. Runway’s fate is eventually saved in the last 30 minutes of the movie with the sudden reappearance of Sasha Barnes as she buys the company and gives Miranda full creative freedom over Runway in true deus ex machina fashion.

The performances do what they can to elevate the film, though only a few actors truly succeed. Meryl Streep slips back into Miranda Priestly with almost unsettling ease, though the character now carries visible exhaustion beneath the icy composure. In the original film, Miranda functioned as an immovable force of nature; now, Streep allows glimpses of insecurity and irrelevance to creep into the performance. Emily Charlton (Emily Blunt), Miranda’s former assistant, arguably benefits the most from the sequel’s premise. She has evolved from comic relief into someone more hardened and professionally calculating, now working as a senior executive at Dior who injects the film with energy whenever it risks becoming stagnant. Yet even she cannot fully overcome dialogue that sounds engineered for trailers, and she becomes, yet again, unimportant as the script loses interest in that subplot. Anne Hathaway seems to constantly be on the verge of tears, and she has evidently lost her chemistry with the rest of the cast. At some point, Andy faces a personal dilemma in which she can’t decide which luxury Manhattan apartment to move into. She consequently falls in love with Peter (Patrick Brammall), a supportive and unproblematic contractor. This serves as a clear contrast to Nate (Adrien Grenier) from the original The Devil Wears Prada, who was cold and unsupportive of Andy’s career as Miranda’s assistant. Compared to the passionate chemistry Andy and Nate had in the original film, Hathaway and Brammall seem to be wholly emotionless while delivering lines, and the romance plotline seems like a gimmick to keep the audience entertained.

Despite being set in one of the most visually creative industries in the world, The Devil Wears Prada 2 surprisingly plays its fashion choices far too safely. The original film treated clothing as storytelling, depicting Andy's gradual transformation into a fashion icon, and using Miranda’s immaculate composure to visually reinforce the themes displayed in the original, of identity and ambition. Here, many of the outfits feel more concerned with appearing expensive than with saying anything meaningful about the characters wearing them. Much of the wardrobe blends into the broader “quiet luxury” aesthetic that already dominates social media, leaving few looks that feel genuinely distinctive or memorable.

What ultimately makes The Devil Wears Prada 2 disappointing is not that it dares to revisit these characters, but that it has surprisingly little to say about them or the world they now inhabit. The film gestures toward timely themes: the collapse of traditional media, the rise of influencer culture, and the precariousness of journalism, yet it never develops these ideas with any real depth, wit, or emotional resonance. Fashion has transformed dramatically since 2006, and the movie clearly recognizes that shift, but recognition alone is not insight. Like the luxury brands it depicts, the sequel appears more concerned with maintaining relevance than earning it.