Picture Credit: Netflix
It’s been a notoriously long wait, and many of us here at What’s on Netflix were beginning to suspect that the return to 657 Boulevard was dead in the water. But hold onto your sinister letters—The Watcher season 2 is officially gearing up for production, according to multiple sources.
If you need a quick refresher, Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s true-crime thriller was originally billed as a limited series when it debuted in October 2022. It became a monstrous hit for Netflix, racking up massive viewership numbers that prompted the streamer to unexpectedly greenlight a second season alongside two more installments of the Monster anthology in November 2022, both of which have now been released, although Murphy still has one foot in the Netflix camp with a fourth season of MONSTER due out later this year.
“Audiences can’t take their eyes off Monster and The Watcher. The creative team of Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, on Monster, along with Eric Newman, on The Watcher, are masterful storytellers [who’ve] captivated audiences all over the world,” Bela Bajaria, the then-head of global TV at Netflix, said in a statement upon the renewal.
However, since that renewal, it’s been radio silence. Between the Hollywood strikes, Murphy’s jumping back to Disney, and a complete lack of substantial news, we even speculated last year that the show had quietly been shelved.
In 2024, we got two major updates on the status of the show, although they truthfully didn’t provide much hope.
Naomi Watts, who played Nora Brannock, told Entertainment Weekly in January 2024, “I know they said yes to the next series, but I haven’t heard anything more. To be honest, we left the house, so I don’t know if we’ll be coming back.” Later that year, she reiterated her lack of information, stating, “I don’t have an update, I’m afraid… I don’t have one, if there is one.”
Similarly, Eric Newman (Executive Producer) provided a very brief, heavily guarded update to Radio Times in early 2024, stating, “I can say nothing other than we’re very excited about the prospect of another season of The Watcher. That’s all I can say.”
Fortunately for fans of the mystery thriller The Watcher, it looks like we’ve finally got movement.
Multiple production sources have been suggesting over the past few months that the series is gearing up to start production sometime this year. Earlier listings in the year suggested that filming would start as early as mid-June 2026 and wrap up by mid-March 2027. However, others suggest, such as ProductionWeekly, that filming may not begin until October 2026 in New York.
Of course, there are now more questions than answers as to what shape season 2 will take. Will it be a continuation of some sort of the first season, or will it transition, as some expect, into more of an anthology format? We’ll have to wait and see in the weeks and months ahead.
Screen Arcade and Ryan Murphy Productions are expected to return as producing partners on the series, with Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan writing and producing. Alexis Martin Woodall, Eric Kovtun, Bryan Unkeless, Eric Newman, Paris Barclay, Naomi Watts, Ariel Schulman, Henry Joost, and Scoop Wasserstein are also listed as producers.
We did reach out to Netflix on two separate occasions regarding the updated filming timelines, but we didn’t hear back.
