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Homecoming Season 2 Teaser Finds Janelle Monáe Adrift and Confused
Created by Eli Horowitz and Micah Bloomberg, the second season of Amazon Prime's Homecoming finds Janelle Monáe (Harriet, Hidden Figures) stepping into the lead role to join Stephan James' Walter Cruz as the mysteries revealed during the first season continue to grow. Kyle Patrick Alvarez (13 Reasons Why, The Stanford Prison Experiment) is set to direct and executive produce, taking over the director's chair from Sam Esmail (Mr. Robot). Chris Cooper (American Beauty), Joan Cusack (Grosse Pointe Blank), Mary Holland (Veep), and Hong Chau (Watchmen) also star, with Bobby Cannavale and Shea Whigham rumored to appear this season. While first season star Julia Roberts is not returning, she remains an executive producer on the co-production between Amazon Studios and UCP.
With a season that moves beyond the source material and introduces new characters, fans are finally getting a teaser for the series return that shows just how much the show's universe will be expanded this time around. In the clip below, Monáe's Jackie wakes up in the middle of a rowboat with a major bout of amnesia. What follows is a montage of some very confusing and dangerous images from Jackie's trip down the rabbit hole with the Homecoming Initiative and parent company Geist Group, with looks at returners Walter and Audrey (Chau), as well as new faces in Geist CEO Leonard Geist (Cooper) and Cusack's mysterious military official. Homecoming is co-produced by Amazon Studios and UCP. Alvarez, Roberts' production company Red Om Films, Esmail's Esmail Corp, and Anonymous Content's Chad Hamilton. Horowitz, Bloomberg, and Chris Giliberti, Alex Blumberg, and Matt Lieber of Gimlet Media also serve as executive producers.
For Horowitz, another season of Homecoming means the creative room to expand the story and have more of a "big picture" feel in how they told it: "Season 1 was so confined and suffocating, and they were all wondering about the world outside the facility, and season 2 is very much about the outdoors and the natural world, and people trying to get inside the Geist headquarters." As for one of the newest additions to the cast, Bloomberg is interested in seeing how viewers react to Cooper's unique "big bad," saying, "You have this expectation of the big bad villain and head of the evil corporation, and what we enjoyed was finding how we could upend those expectations and turn them in a different direction. [Cooper] took this strange idea for a character and made it into the spiritual center of the season."