One of the biggest shows to come out on the 2023 TV schedule so far has been Poker Face, which follows Natasha Lyonne’s Charlie Cale, a lie-detecting cocktail waitress who continually finds herself solving homicides across the country. Created by Rian Johnson, this show quickly earned critical acclaim following its debut Ian January, and it was renewed for Season 2 midway through Season 1’s run. However, Johnson has explained why it will be a while until this next batch of episodes will arrive to Peacock subscribers, while also sharing which Star Wars: The Last Jedi alum he’d like to bring in as a guest star.
A month ahead of Poker Face’s release, Rian Johnson’s latest movie, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Story, was delivered to Netflix subscribers following its brief run in theaters. Like the TV show, the newest movie starring Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc was met with a lot of positive reviews, including our own Mike Reyes giving Glass Onion a perfect 5 out of 5 stars in his review. By the beginning of January, the filmmaker confirmed he’d started writing Knives Out 3, and he informed Deadline that the threequel is his current priority when asked what about Poker Face Season 2’s timetable:
That’s something that’s really up in the air. I mean, a lot of it has to do with what happens in terms of the writers’ strike, and there’s so much that’s unknown at the moment. Also, right now my priority is getting the next Benoit Blanc movie going.
Knives Out 3 has been in the cards ever since Netflix snatched up the rights to both it and what would become Glass Onion back in March 2021, and now that Rian Johnson is busy crafting the threequel, he’d rather focus on completing it before turning his attention to Poker Face Season 2. It’s unclear where Johnson stands with the Knives Out 3 script right now, but assuming he’d also like to shoot the movie as soon as possible, and factoring in the current writers strike, then it seems like Charlie Cale won’t return to the small screen at least a few years. It certainly wouldn’t be the first show to have years pass in between seasons, but it’s understandable for Poker Face fans to be saddened by such a long wait ahead of them.
Still, it’s not like Rian Johnson hasn’t given any thought to the next Poker Face season. One of the big ways the show stands out is with its impressive lineup of guest stars, including people Johnson has worked with before, such as Adrien Brody and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. With that in mind, the writer/director is already interested in reuniting with Kelly Marie Tran, who played Rose Tico in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, for Season 2, saying this when the topic of more faces from Johnson’s movies showing up on the series was mentioned:
I’m calling every single one of them. I would love to get Kelly Marie Tran from Star Wars in there for an episode.
At the end of Poker Face Season 1, Charlie Cale was forced to go back on the run after Rhea Perlman’s Beatrix Hasp, who’d been Sterling Frost Sr.’s rival in the casino game before paying Cliff LeGrand to kill his employer, threatened to kill her if she didn’t agree to come work for her. So now Natasha Lyonne’s character once again finds herself traveling across the United States and using her lie-detecting abilities to shed light on mysteries. When asked if he had an “endpoint” in mind for Poker Face, Rian Johnson responded:
No. Because this all comes from the notion of those shows that were meant to go forever. We’ll always find ways to keep the ball in the air, and that’s its own fun challenge. It’s figuring out how do we keep evolving and keeping it fresh, but the object of that is always going to be so that we can have mysteries of the week, and so that she can be in a different environment every week and we can keep doing what the show does well and keep doing it as long as people want to watch it. And again, to me, there’s something very comforting about that. It’s not like we have a four-season arc planned out and some big dramatic ending. No, as long as this is fun and as long as people keep watching it, let’s give them new mysteries to watch and keep doing it.
As soon as any concrete details about Poker Face Season 2 are announced, CinemaBlend will pass them along. For now, take a look at how we ranked the Poker Face Season 1 episodes, or head to Netflix to watch Glass Onion: A Knives Out Story and/or Natasha Lyonne’s other recent TV hit, Russian Doll.