The end of the world doesn’t have to look like The Walking Dead. Even though a global pandemic has killed millions in Netflix’s big-budget adaptation of Jeff Lemire’s Vertigo comic book, the show’s beautiful vistas are shot in bright colors, with a wistful narration that makes it feel like the apocalypse happened in an episode of Pushing Daisies – the fall of civilization is even known as “the Great Crumble”.
Assuming the streaming service gives it the green light, Sweet Tooth season 2 promises to continue the story of Gus (Christian Convery), a young boy with the antlers and ears of a deer. Known as Sweet Tooth because of his, well, sweet tooth, he’s making his way through a world decimated by “the Sick”, a mysterious illness that came into existence around the same time as people started giving birth to human/animal Hybrids like Gus.
Over its eight-episode run, Sweet Tooth’s first season proved to be an unconventional mix of bleakness and whimsy – containing everything from sadistic militia men to cute animal kids – and it’s seemingly hit the right note with viewers, having topped the Netflix charts on its release. It also left its fair share of mysteries waiting to be solved if – and when – the show returns.
So, in anticipation of the continuing adventures of Gus, we’ve pulled together everything you need to know about Sweet Tooth season 2, from possible release dates to potential storylines. And it goes without saying that there are massive spoilers ahead, so if you’re yet to catch the show’s first season, you’d better watch it on Netflix before reading any further.
Sweet Tooth season 2 release date: 2022?
As it stands, Netflix is yet to confirm a follow-up to the show’s first season, which debuted on June 4, 2021.
Normally the fact that Sweet Tooth shot straight to the top of the Netflix viewing charts would be a promising sign – especially when coupled with the positive responses the series has received from critics and viewers – but the streamer has been rather trigger happy of late, axing seemingly successful shows early. A prime example is Mark Millar’s superhero series Jupiter’s Legacy, which was dropped less than a month after its debut – despite being the most popular show on the platform when it launched in May 2021.
Filmed on location in New Zealand, Sweet Tooth clearly has a blockbuster budget, so Netflix may set a similarly high bar for success.
Assuming the show is given a greenlight, however, we’d expect the Sweet Tooth season 2 release date to be some time in late-2022 or early-2023 – Netflix traditionally leaves around 18 months between seasons of its shows, so this seems like a reasonable prediction.
We wouldn’t expect Covid-19 to add additional delays, seeing as the whole of season 1 – bar the pilot episode – was filmed during the pandemic.
Cut to the chase
- What is it? The second season of Sweet Tooth, the big-budget TV adaptation of Jeff Lemire’s Vertigo comic book series.
- When can I see it? Sweet Tooth season 2 is yet to get a greenlight from Netflix. Assuming the show does return, however, we’d expect to see it some time in the second half of 2022 – or perhaps early 2023.
- Where can I see it? Like the show’s initial eight-episode run, Sweet Tooth season 2 would stream exclusively on Netflix.
Sweet Tooth season 2 cast: who’ll be heading back to the Great Crumble?
While the show’s return is yet to be confirmed, we expect the Sweet Tooth season 2 cast to look like this:
- Nonso Anozie as Tommy Jepperd/Big Man
- Christian Convery as Gus/Sweet Tooth
- Adeel Akhtar as Dr Aditya Singh
- Aliza Vellani as Rani Singh
- Stefania LaVie Owen as Bear/Rebecca Walker
- Dania Ramirez as Aimee Eden
- Neil Sandilands as General Douglas Abbot (aka the General)
- Naledi Murray as Wendy
- Will Forte as Pubba
- Amy Seimetz as Birdie
- James Brolin as the Narrator
The season 1 finale did little to suggest there’ll be major changes in the Sweet Tooth cast second time out. In fact, with no major character departures or deaths, we’d be surprised if anyone we’ve come to know over the show’s first eight-episode run failed to return.
So we’d expect the key figures in the Sweet Tooth season 2 cast to remain Christian Convery as Gus (the eponymous Sweet Tooth), and Nonso Anozie as his ex-footballer guardian Tommy Jepperd (known as ‘Big Man’).
We should also see more from Adeel Akhtar as Aditya Singh, the doctor desperately trying to save his wife, Rani (Aliza Vellani), from the Sick; Stefania LaVie Owen as former Animal Army commander Bear; and Dania Ramirez as Aimee Eden, protector of Wendy (Naledi Murray) and other Hybrids at the so-called Preserve. And it seems likely that Neil Sandilands will continue to terrorize Hybrids and humans alike, as the General, authoritarian leader of the Last Men.
We’d also be surprised if Will Forte doesn’t return to the Sweet Tooth season 2 cast (in flashback) as Gus’s late “Pubba”, while the season 1 finale strongly hinted that Amy Seimetz will have a big part to play as Gus’s ‘mother’ – or, more accurately, creator – Birdie.
And Sweet Tooth wouldn’t be Sweet Tooth without that avuncular voiceover from narrator James Brolin.
Sweet Tooth season 2 trailer: is there one?
Seeing as we don’t yet know if the show is coming back, it’s a little premature to be talking about a Sweet Tooth season 2 trailer. But assuming Gus and Big Man’s adventures through the Great Crumble continue, we’d expect to see something around a month before the second season debuts.
Sweet Tooth season 2 plot: what can we expect from the story?
While the show is based on Jeff Lemire’s comic book series, the source material might not offer that many clues about what to expect from the Sweet Tooth season 2 plot. Lemire’s story is much darker and more violent than the more family-oriented TV series, which makes some big changes from the page.
“The ambition was to create it for a family audience,” producer Susan Downey told Variety. “We want the whole family to be able to watch together. We talked to Jeff Lemire about how Gus is our true north and how his journey and his relationship to Jep and this interesting cast of characters and challenges they meet along the way are what’s important. That’s when we brought [co-showrunner/director] Jim Mickle on and we talked about creating this storybook or fairytale dystopia — this idea that if there was a drastic reduction in population, nature would take over again and it would be green and lush. We all felt confident, and Jeff gave us the blessing that we were keeping what was important to the storytelling and putting it in a more palatable environment.”
Beyond the shift in tone – “You can do different things with comics and with drawings that, if you were to do on screen, it would be beyond shocking,” Lemire pointed out to the Express – changes range from the minor (Jepperd was an ice hockey player in the comic, rather than a football star) to the fundamental (the characters of Bear and Aimee didn’t exist before the TV show). Other differences in Lemire’s comic include Jepperd handing Gus over to the Last Men, and the Animal Army being a group of adult fanatics, rather than the teen freedom fighters seen on TV.
But with the closing episode of season 1 leaving all of its ongoing storylines unresolved, Sweet Tooth was clearly never created as a one-off. “We definitely broke season 1 with the hope of future seasons,” co-showrunner Beth Schwartz told RadioTimes.com.
We expect the Sweet Tooth season 2 plot to pick up exactly where its predecessor left off, especially as the story is starting to bring its key players together, with Gus meeting the other Hybrid children, Tommy Jepperd being nursed to health by Aimee Eden, Dr Aditya Singh being forced to work for the General, and Bear making contact with Gus’s creator, Birdie, at an Antarctic research station.
It also seems unlikely that Covid-19 will alter any plans about the portrayal of the Sweet Tooth’s fictional, pinky-twitching pandemic – after all, season 1 was filmed when much of the world was living under lockdown. In fact, Schwartz says real-life has been an inspiration on the show in some ways.
“In a way, [the pandemic] helped us…” she admitted to RadioTimes.com. “We didn’t have to go too deep into explaining to our audience, ‘This is the pandemic. This is what happened.’ We could do it with simple nods, like the hand sanitizer, or the ‘6-feet apart’ sign that everyone kind of understood.”
What questions does Sweet Tooth season 2 need to answer?
It would almost be cruel if we don’t get to see a Sweet Tooth season 2, because there are so many questions the show needs to answer.
Most importantly, we need to find out why Birdie created human/deer Hybrid Gus (short for Genetic Unit Series 1), if/how his existence led to the birth of all of the other Hybrids, and if they’re connected to the Sick that has killed millions of people around the world.
With a cure for the disease also likely to be a key storyline, we need to find out how close Dr Gladys Bell got to finding a cure – and how far Dr Aditya Singh is prepared to go to save his infected wife, Rani. Will he sacrifice Hybrid lives, or will his meeting with Gus change his outlook on the endeavor – even if it means attracting the wrath of the General?
Other questions on the need-to-know list include the reasons for Birdie’s trip to Alaska (is she working on a cure for the Sick of her own?), why those hallucinogenic purple flowers appear where people are infected, and whether Bear/Rebecca will be reunited with her Hybrid sister, Wendy.
We’re also expecting flashbacks to show us more about Gus’s early days, and to fill in the gaps between the birth of Jepperd’s Hybrid child and his first encounter with Gus – presumably explaining his decisions to join, and subsequently leave, the Last Men.
“I spoke to Jim Mickle, the director, about the character arc and where Tommy’s going to go in relation to some of [the flashbacks],” star Nonso Anozie teased in an interview with the Express. “Some of it is going to be directly from the comic and some of it is going to be stuff that suits our audiences and suits the characters of the Sweet Tooth retelling.”
And who knows, maybe Big Man will even get to try out the “pass the ball” game Gus used to play with his Pubba…
Sweet Tooth season 1 is available to stream on Netflix now.
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