Featurette previews the second season of Starz series American Gods

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

After a year and a half of behind-the-scenes drama, the second season of the series American Gods, which is based on a novel written by Neil Gaiman, has finally begun airing on Starz. To coincide with the show's return, a featurette has been released online to give us a look at what we can expect to see in this long-awaited continuation.

Embedded below, the featurette begins with Gaiman, who is an executive producer on the show, saying that season 2 will start to look "under the surface" of the characters. We are then given information on several of them, including Ricky Whittle as Shadow Moon, an ex-convict who finds himself in the middle of a war between Old Gods and New Gods; Ian McShane as god of war Mr. Wednesday; Pablo Schreiber as god of luck and self-described leprechaun Mad Sweeney; Emily Browning as Shadow's living dead wife Laura Moon; Bruce Langley as Technical Boy; Kahyun Kim as a new version of Media, replacing Gillian Anderson in the role; and Crispin Glover as Mr. World, the god of globalization.

If you watch American Gods, I assume that most of the information provided in this featurette, aside from the glimpses of the new Media, is stuff that you had already gleaned from the first season. For people like me who haven't watched the show, this is a decent introduction to the characters – but we should probably go back to season 1 instead of diving right into season 2.

American Gods season 2 has the following synopsis: 

We were forged in God’s image, but the Gods are also made in ours — and in Season Two the battle moves inexorably toward crisis point as the destinies of gods and men collide. While Mr. World plots revenge for the attack against him in Season One, Shadow throws in his lot with Wednesday’s attempt to convince the Old Gods of the case for full-out war, with Laura and Mad Sweeney in tow. A council at the House on the Rock explodes into chaos, sending deities both Old and New on quests across America that will converge on Cairo, Illinois: forcing Shadow to carve out a place as a believer in this strange new world of living gods — a dark world where change demands commitment, and faith requires terrible sacrifice.

The show airs on Starz on Sunday nights.