The Old Man Season 2: Trailer, Release Date, and Everything You Need to Know

Not only was The Old Man one of the best new shows of 2022, but it was also one of the most popular. The FX revenge action-thriller had one of the biggest and best debuts of that year, breaking records for Hulu and receiving multiple Emmy nominations, including one for leading man Jeff Bridges.

Bridges stars in The Old Man as Dan Chase, a former CIA operative forced out of hiding when an old adversary comes looking for him for revenge. John Lithgow stars as FBI Assistant Director Harold Harper, an old friend of Dan's who leads the efforts to capture him. With plenty of action and twists, as well as a throughline about what it means to be family, The Old Man is a well-written, well-acted espionage thriller with surprising depth that has us eager for Season 2.

But what will The Old Man Season 2 be about? Who is returning? Will the dogs be back? Here's everything we know about The Old Man Season 2.

The Old Man Season 2 release date

After delays from the writers and actors strikes, The Old Man is finally coming back! FX announced that Season 2 will premiere on Thursday, Sept. 12 at 10/9c. The first two episodes of the eight-episode season will premiere back to back, followed by a new episode weekly. All episodes will stream the next day on Hulu. 

The September premiere date comes more than two years after the first season ended. FX ordered a second season of The Old Man on June 27, 2022, shortly after the third episode of Season 1 aired.

The Old Man Season 2 trailer

In July, FX released the first look at The Old Man Season 2. The short teaser shows Chase and Harper looking pretty badass, backed by a military chopper and shooting holes in things, just like we like it. 

What will The Old Man Season 2 be about?

Season 2 picks up immediately after Season 1, with Dan Chase and Harold Harper on a mission to retrieve Angela/Emily (Alia Shawkat) after she was kidnapped by the terrorist Faraz Hamzad. That means heading deep into Afghanistan to get her, straight into the maw of the enemy, in some dramatic version of Grumpy Old Men meets Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. It's easier for Chase, who used to do this when he was younger, but it's not as easy for Harper.

"Forcing Harold Harper to be a little bit more boots on the ground than I think he was used to is hard for them both. [It's hard] to pretend they're young and to remember how to do this job again having been away from it, but it's doubly hard for Harold; he's doing the other guy's job 30 years later," co-creator and executive producer Jonathan E. Steinberg told TV Guide at the Television Critics Association press tour in July. "Finally getting a chance to put them together and letting them breathe for a minute — you know, the end of Season 1 was a real treat [when Chase and Harper finally shared screentime], but it was so breathless — and letting them have a story in which they could just be for a while was really, really exciting."

And while the thrill of seeing Chase and Harper share the screen much more often than they did in Season 1 is an easy highlight, expect a lot of the season to revolve around Emily's point of view, especially after viewers learned late in Season 1 that she is Hamzad's biological daughter.

"I think this season is really constructed around [Emily], her finding her way through an identity crisis that is more literal than any identity crisis I've ever tried to write before," Steinberg said. "She is suddenly becoming aware that not only are there two identities that she has to make sense of within her head, but a third. The third is new, the third is really foreign to everything else that she's experienced in her life. And in a way it's the most biological. It's the one that sort of touches parts of her that she doesn't have words for. And watching her go through that, watching her figure out how she feels about these three father figures, how she feels about herself and where she belongs, is really traumatic and violent and confusing."

You can also bet that Angela/Emily will learn who her real father is quickly. "As a general rule, we never want a character to be too far behind the audience. So that's coming pretty quickly for her," Steinberg told Deadline after the conclusion of Season 1. 

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Who will be in The Old Man Season 2?

Obviously Jeff Bridges and John Lithgow will be back, and given the way The Old Man Season 1 ended — many stories are still ongoing — most of the main cast will return. However, those who didn't escape the finale alive — bye bye, Agent Raymond Waters (E.J. Bonilla) — almost certainly won't return for Season 2.

Those wondering about Zoe's presence in Season 2 need not fret. Though Chase left her to go after his daughter, executive producer Dan Shotz says Zoe and actress Amy Brenneman will "definitely be back," and she has a very exciting story in Season 2. And the big question everyone is asking: Will Dan's Rottweiler dogs return in The Old Man Season 2? Absolutely! "I don't know if The Old Man is a show without the dogs," Shotz said. He gets it.

The Old Man Main Cast

• Jeff Bridges as Dan Chase / Johnny Kohler
• John Lithgow as Harold Harper
• Alia Shawkat as Angela Adams / Emily Chase / Parwana Hamzad
• Amy Brenneman as Zoe McDonald
• Gbenga Akinnagbe as Julian Carson

More shows like The Old Man

After finishing the exhilarating Season 1 finale, you're probably all, "Hey, I want to watch more shows like The Old Man." Ditto. We put together a list of shows featuring ass-kickers, spies, and old men. Here are more shows like The Old Man.

The Old Man Season 1 review

Like you, we were impressed by the first season of The Old Man, especially its throwback feel to the paranoid action thrillers of the 1970s and the lead performances from Bridges and Lithgow. Here's our review.

Where can I watch The Old Man?

The Old Man is an FX series, so it airs on FX and streams on Hulu.