Beef is officially back on the menu. After sweeping the Emmys in the limited series category back in 2024, A24’s Netflix series is returning rather quickly with an all-new story for Season 2 on April 16. Where the original run followed an explosive row between a struggling contractor (Steven Yeun) and a small business owner (Ali Wong), sparked by a fiery road rage incident, viewers will next get to head to a country club for a high-stakes game of coercion between two couples vying for membership in the elitist institution. It’s a very The White Lotus-like setup, complete with plenty of scandal and rich people behaving badly, with a similarly starry cast to boot, headlined by Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, Cailee Spaeny, and Charles Melton.
Ahead of the premiere, the streamer has released an intense first teaser trailer showing the unhinged Beef that will be simmering throughout Season 2. The story centers on newly-engaged Gen Z couple Ashley Miller (Spaeny) and Austin Davis (Melton), who suddenly find themselves involved in the unravelling marriage of their boss at the country club, Joshua Martín (Isaac). Towards the end of the footage, the younger, lower-rung employees snap pictures of the general manager in a blowout argument with his wife, Lindsay Crane-Martín (Mulligan), where glasses are thrown, and Joshua raises his golf club as if he’s about to bludgeon her. With that damning evidence in hand, Ashley and Austin suddenly gain the advantage in their fight to earn the approval of the club’s eccentric billionaire owner, Chairwoman Park (Youn Yuh-jung). Yet, even she’s in the middle of her own complicated scandal with her husband, which complicates matters.
The trailer opens with Isaac’s Joshua driving home exactly why entry in the country club is so coveted. Beyond the luxurious courses and the exclusivity of it all, it affords those within it the chance to “play pretend” for a while and forget all of life’s troubles exist. As he speaks, it’s clear that each of the three couples at the center of Beef Season 2 all have issues they hide beneath their smiles and warm public exteriors. Those facades will slip into pure chaos if the footage is any indication, as the pressures they face both individually and in their interactions with each other turn passive aggression into real, raw anger. Taking part in the beef alongside Isaac, Mulligan, Spaeny, Melton, and Youn are Seoyeon Jang, Song Kang-Ho, William Fichtner, Mikaela Hoover, and BM.
Who Is Behind ‘Beef’ Season 2?
Though Yeun and Wong‘s chapter of Beef is closed, they remain attached to the series as executive producers, alongside Mulligan, Isaac, Melton, Spaeny, Jake Schreier, Anna Moench, Kitao Sakurai, and Ethan Kuperberg. Creator and showrunner Lee Sung Jin is also back at the helm after spearheading the dark comedy to eight awards at the 2024 Emmys and rave reviews. Speaking to Tudum about the upcoming season, he explained how, compared to the show’s debut, this run is a more complete realization of what Beef is all about, with its completely new story and a different type of repressed rage. “It’s more about the internal repression of rage that you see in the workplace,” he explained.
Relationships are also explored more heavily through its three main couples. Austin and Ashley represent a more inexperienced pair still in the honeymoon phase, while the Millennials, Joshua and Lindsay, are more familiar with the occasional strife that naturally comes with years of marriage and know how to weather the storm. In stumbling upon their boss’s personal problems, the young, soon-to-be newlyweds are forced to confront very real, serious challenges they haven’t yet had to face together, making for their first real test before their wedding day and entertaining drama for the audience.
“Austin and Ashley think all they need is each other and the beach. So when we meet them, they are thrust into intersecting with our millennial couple. It’ll be interesting to see with these two how they react to life’s first real struggles.”
Beef Season 2 premieres on Netflix on April 16. Check out the trailer in the player above.
via Collider