Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for The Afterparty Season 2.
It’s hard to make an ongoing murder mystery series, especially when your main characters aren’t cops or detectives, people who’d have an understandable reason to keep finding themselves in terrible situations. So when Apple TV+’sThe Afterpartywas renewed for Season 2 it was hard to see how the story would move going forward. Would we just follow Detective Danner (Tiffany Haddish)? Or would this poor group of souls all once again find themselves in the middle of a murder scene? The show, surprisingly, took something of a middle-ground stance. It’s not Danner we follow but our favorite puzzle-solver Aniq (Sam Richardson) — and while there’s some returning cast,Season 2is changing things up in a lot of ways, and it’s all the better for it.
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What Is Season 2 of ‘The Afterparty’ About?
Zoë (Zoe Chao) and Aniq show up to what they innocently presume will be a nice family wedding for Zoë’s younger sister but end up stumbling into a murder scene that will unravel decades' worth of well-kept secrets. After the groom dies on his wedding night, everyone still on the premises becomes a suspect. With the help of Danner, Aniq is trying tosolve the murderbefore the cops can arrive to clear Zoë’s family’s name. Rather than a group of loosely connected ex-classmates, Season 2 deals with people with a lot more history. Family, business partners, lovers: everyone here has an intimate connection that could give them cause to kill. There’s just so much more to unravel with Season 2.
‘The Afterparty’ Season 2 Leans Even More Into Genre-Bending Episodes
The genre-bending storytelling was one of the main appeals ofSeason 1, but Season 2 blows it out of the water. Season 1 definitely had some stand-out genres, like the musical episode or Zoë’s animated episode, but overall it stayed pretty grounded. The sets weren’t changed dramatically for each perspective, nor were the costumes. It led to a much more cohesive cinematic look between episodes but didn’t really allow them to fully play with the visuals of each person’s perspective. Season 2 is fantastic at this. Grace (Poppy Liu) has a fullPride & Prejudice/regency-inspired fantasy episode, complete with gorgeous costumes and too many candles.
The genres are not only more fully realized this time around but even more revealing of each character’s mindset. Grace’s episode exposes her somewhat naive dream of a storybook romance and rose-tinted glasses.Hannah’s (Anna Konkle) episodeis basically just one massiveWes Andersonhomage, but it also serves to show us how her quirkiness is isolating. The heist episode as a format gives us direct insight into Sebastian (Jack Whitehall) as a character but also serves to show us a darker side of Edgar (Zach Woods) by making him a villain. We also got treated to a 1930s noir crime film, an erotic thriller, and adoomed romance, all reflecting a new perspective on things and all reflecting the biased perspective the storyteller has. Rather than just being a fun way of differentiating episodes, it really feels like the genre choices for Season 2 reflect the characters telling them. Their biases are so extreme that they literally paint the story being illustrated.
‘The Afterparty’ Season 2 Offers a Set of Cool New Characters
The scope of the genre-bending isn’t the only thing that’s bigger and better in Season 2. The cast has also gainedsome fantastic new additions. Zach Woods as the eccentric (and dead) Edgar is delightful to watch, especially as we learn some of the more unsavory sides of his character. Sam Richardson remains delightfully weird and relatable as Aniq to be our audience stand-in to this madness. We also get great additions to the cast likeKen Jeongas Grace’s father,John Choplaying funcle (fun uncle) Ulysses, andElizabeth Perkinsinhabiting the role of Edgar’s mother Isabel. Like in the first season, each character has something they’re hiding, but due to the setting being a wedding, they’re all much more involved with each other’s lives than a bunch of people who went to high school together. This season exposes multiple affairs, false identities, lies, and manipulations — all with the extra fun of this largely being family drama.
‘The Afterparty’ Season 2 Is Making Us Doubt Ourselves
The whole bit with a murder mystery is trying to figure out who the killer is. Guessing the twist before the characters do is half the fun. ButThe Afterpartyis all about how people’s perspectives are fallible and how people lie. It’s hard to guess who the killer is when everyone is lying to us, at least a little bit — and this season doesn’t only make us doubt the characters and their perspectives, it makes us doubt ourselves. We, like Aniq, blindly assume Zoë and her family aren’t involved in this. WeknowZoë.We like Zoë!We spent all of Season 1 learning why Aniq loves her so much. Of course, we don’t want to doubt her. But by making her go off on her own and at times even sabotage the investigation to try and protect her family we start to see that our perspective was limited as well. We were also blinded by Aniq’s love for her — but if Season 2 teaches us anything it’s that anyone could be lying, and it’s harder to tell the closer you are. We, like Aniq, have to start looking beyond what’s been presented to us at surface value.
Season 2 ofThe Afterpartyhas no right to be this good. The visual homages are even stronger this time around, the cast is fantastic, and the mystery is even juicer this time. Each episode really feels like a revelation with each new perspective adding a piece to the puzzle. It’s not just the flashier settings or the incredibly talented cast, this season feels more tightly written as well. It’s not just a single thing that’s made Season 2 better than what came before; it’s everything working in concert. It was hard to imagine what a second season for this show could look like without just dragging back the entire old cast, but the creative voices behind the series have really chosen a smart route that allows for characters both new and old.The Afterpartyis clearly challenging itself to be better this season from every angle — visually, character-wise, and thematically — as well as pushing itself and its audience to think bigger.
New episodes ofThe AfterpartySeason 2 premiere every Wednesday on Apple TV+.
