The much-anticipated second season of "Beef" returns on April 16 on Netflix. Created by Lee Sung Jin, Season 2 is headlined by Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, Charles Melton, Cailee Spaeny, Youn Yuh-jung, and Song Kang-ho, among others.
Lee Sung Jin returns as showrunner, director, and executive producer. The season consists of eight 30-minute episodes, all set to be released at once.
'Beef' is an anthology series, and Season 2 is not a direct continuation of the first season's story. It features an entirely new cast, setting, and conflict. The story of Danny and Amy is considered "complete" as of the Season 1 finale.
As of now, there's no indication that Steven Yeun and Ali Wong would appear as characters on camera or for a brief appearance. However, they remain involved as executive producers for Season 2.
Lee Sung Jin had described Season 2 as the "inverse" of Season 1 — moving from the "overt and aggressive" road rage of strangers to the "passive-aggressive" power struggles of the workplace.
The new story revolves around the general manager of a country club (Oscar Isaac) who is seemingly committed to maintaining a place where people can "feel safe" and "pretend everything is okay." However, what's going on with his personal life appears to be a whole different thing altogether. Carey Mulligan plays his wife, caught in an eroding marriage.
Lee Sung Jin said, in an official Netflix statement, that the inspiration came from real-life events. “We’ve all been seen at our worst in the privacy of our own home,” he said. In the process of developing the entire concept for Season 2, Lee hoped to see the after-effects of personal conflicts spilling over into the workplace, affecting relationships between coworkers.
“We wanted to change the feeling of this season’s beef to be a bit more passive-aggressive,” he added. “It’s more about the internal repression of rage that you see in the workplace.”
Lee also wanted to explore generational differences between the two couples at the centre of the story. Charles Melton ("May December") and Cailee Spaeny ("Alien: Romulus") essay a Gen Z couple still in the early honeymoon stage of their relationship, in stark contrast with the above couple.
“We’ve seen a lot of ‘boomer versus younger couple’ stories in the past,” Lee said. “We thought, ‘What if we actually made them a little bit closer in age and highlighted the generational divide between the millennial couple and the Gen Z couple?’”