Will There Be a ‘Happy Face’ Season 2?

Alyssa Norwin May 1, 2025, 10:57 am

Dennis Quaid as Keith Jesperson and Annaleigh Ashford as Melissa Reed in Happy Face, season 1 — Victoria Will/Paramount+

[WARNING: This post contains MAJOR spoilers from Season 1 of Happy Face.]

Season 1 of Paramount+‘s Happy Face concluded with the finale on Thursday, May 1. The show told the story of Melissa Moore (known as Melissa Reed in the show), whose father is convicted serial killer Keith Jesperson, and was adapted from her 2018 podcast of the same name.

Happy Face stars Annaleigh Ashford as Melissa and Dennis Quaid as Keith, the Happy Face killer (who’s currently serving a life sentence in prison without parole). But will there be more story to tell in a Season 2 after that unexpected finale cliffhanger? Scroll down for everything we know.

Will there be a Season 2 of Happy Face?

No, so far there are no plans announced for a Season 2 of the show.

However, the show managed to leave viewers with a bit of a cliffhanger after Melissa’s husband, Ben (James Wolk), had second thoughts about asking a prison guard to take a hit out on Keith. It didn’t end up mattering since Keith had a heart attack before getting shanked anyway, and Ben never told Melissa what he had done. Keith ended up surviving, and called up Ben with a threat: “I know what you did, or what you tried to do. You couldn’t even get that right, could you, Benny boy? Did you really think that it wouldn’t get back to me? Did you really think that I wouldn’t find out?”

So, this could set up a potential Season 2, with Keith still embroiled in Melissa’s life even after she walked out of his hospital room. “I am putting together a Season 2 pitch, and hopefully we’ll get a renewal,” showrunner Jennifer Cacicio told TV Insider.

What could happen in Happy Face Season 2?

“I just had a Zoom with Melissa the other day kind of picking her brain about the different cases she’s worked on and everything that’s happened with her dad … every single time I talk to her I’m just like, ‘God, there’s a wealth of material here,'” Cacico added. “The story just keeps unfolding. He’s still trying to connect with her, she still has other people, like third parties, reaching out with her and trying to communicate with her for him. I have people reaching out to me trying to talk to me. It’s kind of unfolding, and a lot of the cases that she covers, he finds a way to try and kind of get involved, as well.”

She also noted that there’s subjects from Moore’s podcast and book that the show never even “touched on.” “She’s really had this wild life and I feel like, definitely, it has legs,” Cacicio shared. “There’s a lot of different directions we could go. I’ve always seen it as a multi-season show, definitely.”

Cacicio also promised that viewers would get answers about how Keith found out about Ben’s plan. “I don’t know how far we would get into that, but definitely, Keith’s revenge against Ben would be a story and we’d probably learn how he found out,” she confirmed.

It’s also worth noting that Moore’s Happy Face podcast did have a second season. While she told her own story in Season 1 of the podcast, the second season was about another woman, Becky Babcock, who had to come to terms with being the child of a convicted murderer.

On the show, Melissa’s story ended with her getting a promotion at work to have her own talk show segment. So, it’s certainly possible that Happy Face could return for Season 2 and focus on Melissa exploring Babcock’s story.

“I’m exploring a couple of different ideas. I don’t want to say which one I’m leaning towards,” Cacicio teased. “She’s worked on so many fascinating and well-known true crime cases, so there’s almost a wealth of ways you can go. But I think it would be similar where it’s really about the emotional story, especially the family and the way the family is affected would be a big part of Season 2. Keith’s revenge on Ben would affect everybody. But there would be some sort of fresh case that Melissa’s covering as a journalist and she kind of gets pulled into it, and we’d have to pull Keith into it somehow as well.”

Did 'Happy Face' Star Dennis Quaid Meet the Serial Killer Before Filming?

How many episodes of Happy Face are there?

Season 1 has eight total episodes. The series premiered on March 20 with its first two episodes, then dropped a new episode every Thursday until the May 1 finale.

Happy Face, Streaming Now, Paramount+