Fox has officially announced its renewal for Prodigal Son Season 2, assuring fans that the crimson-coated cliffhanger on which the inaugural season ended will get to play out onscreen. Moreover, in a move that seems to imply that this renewal was always in the bag, the network also released a proper teaser trailer for the second season of Prodigal Son, featuring new footage about the aftermath of said cliffhanger moment (more on that angle later).

Prodigal Son Season 2 Release Date

Fox is set to ring in the new year with Prodigal Son Season 2 premiering Tuesday, Jan. 12 at 9 p.m. ET. The show was previously confirmed for the 2020-2021 TV season and it seems as though the network was satisfied enough with the its coronavirus protocol to maintain that schedule.

Prodigal Son Season 2 Cast

As Michael Thorn, Fox’s president of entertainment, expresses of the renewal in a statement: However, don’t expect Phillips’s Gil to take a turn for the worse, despite the cliffhanger on which he was left. The creators have made it abundantly clear that he’s too valuable to let go, especially with him being the show’s straight-and-narrow fatherly fulcrum and potential love interest to Jessica. Indeed, as Sklaver said back in April of the notion of not bringing him back, “I would go further and say that we would be fired. He’s too great. It is a major thing that we’re going to have to deal with.” New characters introduced in season 2 include Dr. Brandon Marsh (played by Michael Potts), Martin’s new psychologist and Friar Pete (Christian Borle), a new patient at Claremont Psychiatric Hospital.

Prodigal Son Season 2 Trailer

Michael Sheen introduces the newest Prodigal Son season 2 trailer and clearly gets some enjoyment from being “everyone’s favorite serial killer.” As we can see from the trailer, Prodigal Son Season 2 is diving head-first into the dramatically-veered arc of Halston Sage’s Ainsley Whitly, Malcolm’s sister, who—at least up until now—was an innocuous television reporter with an intrepid, perhaps slightly-aggressive attitude that’s proved damaging to her relationships. However, after being increasingly curious about her father’s mindset across the episodes, Season 1’s climactic moment saw Sage’s Ainsley carry out his outrageous request to keep the family safe by killing evil entrepreneur Nicholas Endicott (Dermot Mulroney), seemingly getting a disturbing kick from slicing open his throat, and demonstrating that she might be an apple that didn’t fall far from the serial killer tree. Indeed, the Season 2 teaser effectively sets the tone for Ainsley’s own family-traditional descent into madness.

Prodigal Son Season 2 Story Details

With an air of inevitability that even came with a teaser trailer, some might wonder why the Prodigal Son Season 2 renewal announcement took so long, especially since the Season 1 finale aired back on April 27, 2019—nearly a month before the renewal ultimately arrived. The approach stood in stark contrast from last year when the network quickly gave a backorder for more episodes of the inaugural season. While the topic wasn’t addressed in the renewal statement, it does seem like a case of crossing t’s and dotting i’s on cast contracts, notably the always-busy Michael Sheen. Regardless, the co-creator Chris Fedak states that everyone was “cautiously optimistic” about the show’s chances of renewal. Prodigal Son premiered on Fox back on September 23, brandishing a headliner in (freshly-killed-off) The Walking Dead alumnus Tom Payne, who played a character named Jesus on that series, transitioning to—coincidentally—this biblically titled new crime drama. His protagonist character, Malcolm Bright (née Whitly), is a police consultant profiler who happens to be the son of notorious serial killer Martin Whitly, who’s played to demented perfection by Michael Sheen. Thus, the series—putting a spin on the dynamic of NBC’s The Blacklist—shows Malcolm using his well-honed professional skills to solve crimes in New York City, albeit with occasional help from the mindset of a killer via his institutionalized father, who whimsically obliges. Thus, Prodigal Son Season 2 will likely (as evidenced by the teaser trailer,) continue building on Ainsley’s transformation and how it affects a perennially traumatized Malcolm, who—in the complete opposite manner—was able to prove that he was not his father. Additionally, as Fedak teased back in late-April of the Season 2 direction: