The Star-Crossed Love Story of ‘The Hunting Wives’ Continues

Last summer’s steamy surprise hit, The Hunting Wives, is back with a bang for its second round this Thanksgiving on Netflix. Going off-book from author May Cobb’s bestselling crime thriller (the writer remains an executive producer on the soapy drama), Season 2 picks up a few weeks after anxious ex-coastal elite Sophie O’Neil (Brittany Snow) hit and killed an angry Kyle Burkett (Michael Aaron Milligan) with her car — then dumped his body and stole his cell phone — in the freshman finale.

You can bet taking out the beloved brother of her Texan socialite lover Margo Banks (Malin Åkerman) will have ramifications for the anxious Sophie. When Season 2 picks up, Kyle’s death is weighing on Sophie’s conscience “a lot,” says showrunner Rebecca Cutter. “Sophie has an enormous amount of paranoia [and] fear, and not to mention, she had confessed to the affair [with Margo] to [her husband] Graham [Evan Jonigkeit], so their relationship is in a terrible place. She’s just in complete and utter turmoil….it’s pretty rough in Sophie’s head.”

And it’s not like she’s got Margo in her corner anymore. Sophie blew up on Margo when she discovered that the latter was the cold-blooded murderer of teen Abby Jackson (Madison Wolfe). But as Cutter puts it: “Sophie’s lying to herself about her feelings [for Margo]. She really wants to think that she’s over her, because she knows she’s a murderer and a bad person. But the heart wants what it wants. And the subconscious always tells the truth. So, we see a lot of Sophie’s subconscious feelings about Margo, but when she speaks out loud, she refers to her as a nightmare or a monster.”

Still, these two can’t stay away from each other for long, right? “At the heart of it, it’s still a star-crossed love story between Sophie and Margo,” Cutter confirms. “[But] their love story is always going to be interrupted by the realities of their circumstances. They both have to do certain things to survive, first and foremost.”

For Margo, that means facing her politically aimed husband, Jed (Dermot Mulroney), who is furious with her after her admission that she had an affair with high schooler Brad (George Ferrier, who returns for a “tragic ride,” teases Cutter). Margo even told Jed that Brad got her pregnant and she aborted the baby. Jed slapped Margo and kicked her out of the house in the finale, and it’s not any better when these eight episodes begin. “In Season 1, Margo is a murderer, and the audience doesn’t know that until the very end of the last episode. So, we, the writers, had to hide a lot of her interior life,” explains Cutter. “This season, we get to see her true interior life, and the truth behind the perfect, camera-ready Queen Bee. We get to see a lot more of the real [aspects] of her relationship with Jed this season. And it does start in a rough place.”

Not helping the situation is Jed’s tough new campaign manager/fixer Lincoln Trout (Alex Fitzalan). “Jed is an emotional man, and he truly does love Margo. Lincoln is a much more black-and-white thinker,” Cutter says. “He doles out the punishment when there’s trouble.”

And trouble there will be. Cutter teases that there is a new murder mystery on deck this season, which will not only keep hard-working Maple Brook P.D. detectives Wanda Salazar (Karen Rodriguez) and Walter Flynn (Hunter Emery) busy, but also serve as a reason for Sophie and Margo to rekindle their relationship…eventually. “The entire police plot that we came up with for Season 2 was very much engineered to force them back together,” says Cutter. “They are forced into each other’s orbit in the crime drama mystery space first.”

That mystery may or may not involve a new character, biker gang leader Zelda Moffitt, played by Widow’s Bay’s Dale Dickey, who Cutter wrote the part for. “I really wanted a strong character who’s not just the rich, fancy people, and so Dale Dickey comes in and does a truly star turn as a real badass B,” she notes.

Meanwhile, Margo’s scorned lover and sometimes-pal Callie (Jaime Ray Newman) makes a new lady acquaintance, Nadia (Kim Matula, LA to Vegas). “Nadia is someone who sees Callie as the star that Callie views herself as,” Cutter says. “If Season 1 Callie was always in Margo’s shadow, in Season 2 she gets a whole glow-up, and she gets to be the star of her own show.”

Speaking of stars, John Stamos hops aboard Wives this season as mystery addition Chase Brylan. Cutter promises his role — and how he comes into Brad’s orbit, as seen in the series’ first look photos — is worth the wait. “John Stamos overdelivers,” the EP raves. “He plays the camp, but he plays the real at the same time. It’s a really fun turn by him.”

One thing the showrunner can say for the second outing is that they are upping the ante, in every way possible. Says Cutter: “We get to see more toxicity, more love, more sex, more rage, more conniving, more murder wives — everything! This is a maximalist show, always has been, and we are not going to let any emotional scene go unseen. We do it all with them.”

Bless her heart.

The Hunting Wives, Season 2 Premiere, Thursday, November 26, Netflix