As Elsbeth's first season comes to an end, sights are drawn to the potential release of Season 2.
Set in the world of The Good Wife and The Good Fight, Elsbeth is the latest spin-off series from the beloved legal drama.
However, this time around, instead of focusing on courtroom proceedings, Elsbeth was a crime procedural. It follows Carrie Preston's Elsbeth Tascioni, a former Chicago attorney who becomes an unconventional detective after moving to New York.
Is Elsbeth Renewed for Season 2?
The hit crime drama was officially renewed by CBS a few weeks into its first-season run in mid-April of 2024.
This came as the new Good Wife spin-off was averaging 11 million viewers per episode in Live+35 multiplatform viewing, cementing itself as a hit for the network.
When Will Elsbeth Season 2 Release?
According to series lead Carrie Preston in a post on X (formerly Twitter), filming for the second season is set to begin sometime this summer, with an eventual premiere coming "in the fall:"
"We start shooting season 2 in July! Will air in the fall."
While Season 1 debuted as part of CBS's winter programming schedule, this move to the fall should not be all that surprising.
Season 1 was initially supposed to debut in Fall 2023 but was delayed until February 2023 after its production schedule was interrupted by strikes that dominated Hollywood through much of Summer 2023.
With Season 2, the series can be added to the fall TV schedule, hitting CBS in the slot it was initially envisioned for.
Who's Cast in Elsbeth Season 2?
Coming into Season 2 of Elsbeth, fans can expect much of the same cast from the first batch of episodes to return.
Showrunner Jonathan Tolins has said as much, telling TV Insider he hopes to keep the same "small cast of regulars" together while bringing in "wonderful bigger guest stars" to fill out the cast week-to-week:
"Yeah, I’m hoping we might have a little bit more flexibility of getting really some great people who can recur a bit like our detectives do. But the way the show is built, it’s not just creative. It’s also a strategy for budget that you have a small cast of regulars, so you can afford to have these wonderful bigger guest stars."
This small core group is headed up by the series' namesake, Elsbeth Tascioni (played by Carrie Preston). The Good Wife character returns in this CBS spin-off, turning her life as a quirky Chicago attorney to become a just-an-offbeat consulting detective in New York City.
Preston's eccentric police detective will likely be joined by Wendell Pierce as the curmudgeonly police chief Wagner and Carra Patterson's friendly NYPD officer Kaya Blanke, among others.
The full expected Elsbeth Season 2 cast can be seen below:
- Carrie Preston - Elsbeth Tascioni
- Wendell Pierce - Captain Wagner
- Carra Patterson - Kaya Blanke
- Danny McCarthy - Agent Fred Celetano
- Fredric Lehne - Lieutenant Dave Noonan
- Gloria Reuben - Claudia Payne
[ Who Is Carra Patterson? 5 Things to Know About Elsbeth's Kaya Blanke Actress ]
What Will Happen in Elsbeth Season 2?
As CBS lines up Elsbeth Season 2, fans can expect even more thrilling drama from the hit crime procedural.
Fans who watched the Season 1 finale will know the series' first batch of episodes ended with a major move being made at the NYPD.
After weeks of consulting on cases, thanks to a helpful friendship between Elsbeth and Carra Patterson's police detective, Kaya, Carrie Preston's leading lady was officially brought into the police detachment's ranks.
This means instead of being a defacto detective like she was for much of Season 1, Season 2 will see the title character as a legitimate working NYPD detective.
However, because Elbesth is now officially a member of the NYPD, she might not get to work with Kaya as she did in Season 1.
According to showrunner Jonathan Tolins, fans should not expect "to have just Kaya the detective and Elsbeth the consent decree lady working together every case" (via TV Insider):
"I certainly don’t expect us to have just Kaya the detective and Elsbeth the consent decree lady working together every case. We will continue to have our fun rotation of detectives, and I hope to add more. We’ll mix it up."
Instead, the Elsbeth creative team will see what other personalities Preston's titular character can gel with on the force, potentially bringing in some new faces.
He added that Season 2 could see the series mix things up structurally, potentially dealing with two-episode cases or other new-to-the-show narrative devices:
"We haven’t yet. We’ll see. We certainly are going to have a break over Christmas and stuff where we’re not going to have new episodes for us, so we might want to do some kind of cliffhanger to keep us going. But again, all that is also in addition to creative questions, there are production and business questions about it. Sorry, I’m being so vague. It’s just I depend on my room so much. I don’t like to make a decision without it."
As for exact plot specifics, Tolins remains tight-lipped, only letting slip that they are "keeping" Elsbeth's adorable dog Gonzo.
Elsbeth Season 1 is streaming now on Paramount+.
