Amazon Prime series Homecoming is back for Season 2 after a year and a half hiatus, and in many ways it looks very different. In 2018's Season 1, we followed Heidi Bergman (Julia Roberts) as she put together the puzzle pieces of her former life as a caseworker at a secret government facility testing out experimental drugs on soldiers to erase their PTSD and send them back into active duty. Things got tricky for Heidi as she became more involved with one of her patients, Walter Cruz (Stephan James), and, a few years later, was forced to revisit what happened as a Department of Defense agent (Shea Whigham) investigated was happened. Heidi ultimately finds out what happened to Walter, coming to terms with Walter making a new life for himself in rural northern California and going her own way.

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Image via Amazon Studios

In light of Season 1's ending, you'd think the show might choose to pick up with Walter's journey, turning him into the new protagonist and following him in a post-Homecoming initiative world. Alas, the first mistake Homecoming makes is not doing this. Instead, as we've seen in the Homecoming Season 2 trailer, we're going in expecting another puzzle box but it's not Walter's puzzle — it's army veteran Jackie Calico's (Monáe). Season 2 kicks off with Jackie waking up in a rowboat in the middle of a lake somewhere in the wilderness. With no memory of her life before this moment and just a few items to help piece her life back together, Jackie soon discovers she may have connections to the Geist Group, the shadowy organization overseeing the Homecoming initiative. Along the way in this new season, Geist employee Audrey Temple (Hong Chau) and James' Walter Cruz return in important ways while newcomers Chris Cooper and Joan Cusack appear in solid supporting roles as Geist founder Leonard Geist and eccentric Department of Defense official Francine Bunda, respectively. So, with some casting changes and a new mystery in place for viewers to dive into, is Homecoming Season 2 worth the watch?

Unless you're a diehard Homecoming fan, Season 2 will probably disappoint. It's not that Homecoming Season 2 isn't as bingeable or well-acted or stylish as Season 1; it most definitely is all of these things. But after screening several episodes, it's hard not to come away feeling like you've just watched what effectively amounts to a neat little epilogue rather than a continuation of the first season, which is what you might expect. A majority of Season 2 is devoted to tying up loose ends or filling in gaps left open by Season 1, and is structured in such a way that it feels like a mystery. In fact, any sense of mystery or puzzle box-ness is abandoned fairly early, and instead, the season opts to take a page out of Damon Lindelof's book, playing around with time in order to tell its story.

The stakes don't feel raised; they feel recycled. The dramatic thrust doesn't feel new; it's reused. And while I don't demand every season of every TV show offer some grand statement about the human condition or the way we live, I do expect it to at least have a climax to build towards and be bold enough to open up its story in continuing seasons so it feels like a new chapter is at least being embarked upon. Ultimately, none of the narrative tricks Homecoming tries to pull off here actually work because there aren't enough big surprises or revelations to warrant all of its twistiness. Frankly, I wish I could tell you more but to do that would be to spoil what little there is to spoil and I don't feel like being that much of a Debbie Downer.

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Image via Amazon Studios

The strongest part of Homecoming's continuing story are the performances turned in my newcomer Monáe and returning cast member Hong Chau. Frankly, without these two actors anchoring Season 2 with their strong, assured performances, Homecoming Season 2 would be as adrift as Jackie is when we first meet her in the premiere. I've always enjoyed watching Monáe in actor mode and it's exciting to see what happens when she's put into a more prominent leading role. Monáe really excels as Jackie, with smart performance instincts helping to form a solid, fully-realized lead character. As for Chau, who has never (ever, ever, ever, etc.) disappointed, watching her command the screen as Audrey is a thing of beauty. Audrey is ambitious, cutthroat, and driven in Season 1, but in Season 2 we get some more depth as we watch all of the unsure steps Audrey took to get to her top position at Geist. Chau knows how to insert layers of meaning into a sentence with just a look, and it makes her performance in Season 2 completely compelling.

Back in October 2018, Homecoming co-creator and Season 1 director Sam Esmail (Mr. Robot) described to The Hollywood Reporter the general approach to adapting the story originally told in the Gimlet Media podcast on which this show is based: "We’ve deviated from very much of the podcast, so [Season 2 of] the podcast doesn’t really have anything to do with the way the show is going. We’re working on a second season, but we have a very different trajectory for our show."

It's just as true now as it was at the time of Esmail's comments that the Homecoming TV show has always had a definite story it wanted to tell and it succeeded in telling it. However, what gives me pause, even as a longtime fan of both the Homecoming podcast and Season 1, is just how unfulfilling Season 2 ends up being. Yes, Homecoming Season 2 is stylish and well-acted and probably not the worst way to spend a few hours of binge time. But whether or not you actually want to invest your time in it is another matter entirely. Even if you are a fan, I'm not entirely sold on Season 2 being the satisfying next chapter we've been hoping for.

Grade: C+

Homecoming Season 2 premieres in its entirety on Friday, May 22 on Amazon Prime Video.