One Of Us Is Lying returns for an even darker and more twisted season 2 on October 20. Murder Club will be dealing with the aftermath of Jake’s death, and someone knows exactly what they’ve done. HollywoodLife spoke EXCLUSIVELY with showrunner Erica Saleh about how quickly we’ll find out who killed Jake: was it Addy, Janae, or Cooper?
“You will find out who actually pulled the trigger. You’ll find that out early in the season. It’s the first mystery we’re going to solve for you,” Erica revealed.
Addy will be having a difficult time coping with the trauma she’s experienced, Jake’s death, and the feelings she felt for him. “I think there are a lot of really confusing, conflicting emotions for her,” Erica said. “I think we want our heroes to just have this straight-line journey toward the light and toward being better. I think Addy makes so much progress and becomes this more true version of herself by the end of season 1. But watching the person she loved die, even if he wasn’t who she thought he was, still has a huge effect on her.”
Erica added, “She does start this season in a pretty dark place and in a really hard, confusing place and really has a journey to go on to kind of find peace and find acceptance with what happened.”
Addy, Cooper, Nate, Bronwyn, and Janae soon find themselves being blackmailed by someone behind Simon Says. This time around, these teens aren’t innocent, so that ups the stakes in an even bigger way in season 2.
“I think this person is playing a really fun game of power and is enjoying the power that they have over them,” the showrunner teased. “Things heat up and things get pretty crazy and pretty dark. But I’ll say I think some of the things that Simon Says asks them to do, especially early in the season, are not what they are expecting of someone who knows there’s this huge dark secret. I think there are some surprises in terms of how this person wields their control.”
Should we be concerned about the safety of the Murder Club? “Oh, yeah. I think we should definitely be worried for Murder Club,” Erice stressed. “I mean, at the very least, this person knows what they did. Slight spoiler, but we realized pretty quickly that this person really knows what they did and could totally send them to jail. But that might be the best-case scenario for them.”
On top of the Jake situation, there’s still plenty of other drama elsewhere. Bronwyn and Nate went their separate ways at the end of the first season, but Erica noted that these two can’t stray far from each other.
“I think it’s hard for Bronwyn and Nate to be in a room together and not be pulled together,” Erica told HollywoodLife. “That attraction is going to be there no matter what, and they do really struggle with how much can they trust each other, especially now when they have this huge secret. Is it too complicated? I think, especially for Nate, who doesn’t have a great family life and is used to people walking away from him, the idea of really trusting Bronwyn is really scary. There’s a lot of push-pull between the two of them this season. With Nate, there’s a lot of hesitation around being willing to trust someone as much as he would need to trust Bronwyn to really be with her.”
The Peacock series is inspired by Karen McManus’ bestselling novel of the same name. Erica revealed that season 2 “absolutely” leaves it open for a third season with the characters we know and love.
“The second season takes us into the second semester of their senior year, and I would love to have a third season where we try to get these kids safely out of high school. We’ll see,” Erica said. One Of Us Is Lying season 2 will be available on Peacock.