‘Sheriff Country’ Boss Previews Romantic & Family Drama in Season 2

Forget bullets. “We come into the season like we’re shot out of a cannon!” warns Sheriff Country showrunner Matt Lopez, teasing big fallout from last season’s bombshell finale.

As fans of the Fire Country spinoff know, the freshman hit starring the exquisite Morena Baccarin as Sheriff Mickey Fox of Fire’s fictional Edgewater, CA, left us hanging with the reveal that pesky DEA deputy director Eva Santos (Rachel Ticotin) had cut a deal with Mickey’s jailed, weed-dealing dad Wes (W. Earl Brown) — whom Mickey had cut ties with over his return to illegal activity — to team with his kid on a case to bring down a new cartel. To make their family feud trickier, when Wes was brought in to meet with the ladies, he realized Eva was actually Mickey’s long-presumed dead mother!

“We set a lot of motion in those last two or three episodes,” laughs Lopez. “Our season premiere and our first few episodes are very much about Mickey dealing with the aftershocks, both emotional and I’ll say sheriff-related, of the last few big moves of the season — which, if you’ll recall included her finding out that her former sister-in-law, Miranda Fraley [Kelli O’Hara], was the sort of drug kingpin of Edgewater; finding out that a man she really fell in love with, Alec Kane [Wes Chatham], was Miranda’s enforcer and a dirty DEA agent who very much pulled the wool over her eyes; and then of course, in the last frames of Season 1, finding out that the somewhat adversarial deputy director of the DEA, Eva Santos, is in fact her mother, who she believed had been dead for 30 years.”

Darren Goldstein/CBS

Got that all? Good. Because it’s a lot to unpack, but Lopez assures us that “viewers will not have to wait long for the origin story of how all of that went down, [why] Eva left their lives and how did it come to be that both Wes and Mickey believed that she was dead? It’s very emotionally rich terrain and I think audiences will be really happy. It’s not just a card turn for a card turn’s sake. It’s grounded in some really fantastic emotion.”

Also getting Mickey in the feels is the fact that she’s now stuck in a deal with Eva to work with the father she is trying to sever ties with to bring down a Bulgarian cartel. “It’s such a fun dynamic, because you have Eva essentially acting as a handler and she’s handling Mickey and Wes, who Mickey swore she would never speak to again,” maps out Lopez. “Now she’s got to actually not just speak to him, but work with him. But it’s her town and she’s going to swallow her feelings about her father to try and protect her town.”

Thankfully, Mickey has some solid (and swoon-worthy) backup to help her process the twist, including Deputy Boone (Matt Lauria), still recovering from being shot in the season finale and nursing his not-so-secret feelings for her.

Related

Noah Reid to Guest on 'Sheriff Country,' Possibly Lead Medical Spinoff

“He and Mickey have a great story in Season 2,” Lopez promises. “The events of Season 2 start pretty quickly after the last episode of Season 1. Boone is emerging from the ICU. Mickey is dealing with the fallout of these bombshell revelations and almost immediately they are thrown into a case that will span a couple of our early episodes.”

He continues, “And Boone starts off the season being a rock for Mickey. It’s kind of like Mickey and Boone at their best, when they are just an unbelievable support system for each other and crime-fighting duo.” That is not to say, however, that they are firmly back in the friend zone. “In fact, we will explore, are their feelings going the other way?” confirms the exec producer. “If you remember, Mickey told Boone in episode 119, ‘Look, I’d be lying if back when we were partners…’ so we’ll see. We’re going to explore, are there still some embers there?”

Boone better watch his back, though, because someone is coming in who definitely sets off sparks with Baccarin: Her Gotham costar and real-life, off-screen partner, husband Ben McKenzie, who guest-stars in the opener, “Cyclone,” as Jim Wade, a fellow law enforcer close to Mickey’s heart.

John Medland/CBS

“What’s funny is I’ve known Ben a long time,” Lopez reveals. “I met Morena before Sheriff Country, I actually met her years ago through Ben. And early last season, we were like, ‘We’ve got to get Ben in,’ but he was doing his documentary, [Everybody is Lying to You for Money], so it didn’t work out. Then this season we’re like, ‘All right, we’ve got to do it.’ And so yes, it’s fun. People who loved them on Gotham [know]. And I mean, you’d be worried if they didn’t have good onscreen chemistry!”

As for what the always endearing McKenzie is up to in the season opener, Lopez will only tease that “we find out an instrumental role he played in [Mickey’s daughter] Skye’s life,” Lopez explains of Wade. “[And] his friendship means a lot to Mickey… but he is the sheriff of one county over and I say, maybe they don’t see eye to eye on everything. Including how best to sheriff their respective towns.” Hmmm…they do say opposites attract!

Sheriff Country, Season 2 Premiere, Friday, October 9, 8/7c, CBS