Within the vast Apple TV library of series, there’s a subset of well-cast but vaguely titled shows that even a moderately informed TV viewer may doubt the existence of in casual conversation. For every “Ted Lasso,” there’s an Owen Wilson-led golf comedy named “Stick.” For every “Severance,” there’s a Gugu Mbatha-Raw thriller named “Surface.” Did you know Uma Thurman led an international espionage series called “Suspicion”? Some people still don’t know that the Godzilla/King Kong series “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” is led by father-son duo Kurt and Wyatt Russell playing the same character.
This is not a criticism of Apple TV’s marketing, because lord knows they have the money to burn to get the word out. In fact, they are more committed to their underperforming series, rather than brutally cancelling them after one season like a certain pioneer in this space. Instead, this is an indictment of the gluttony of TV today and the sheer mass of options that results in an entire arm of a streaming service’s programming flying under the radar, even with huge stars at the helm.
This also happens to be where Jennifer Garner’s “The Last Thing He Told Me” lives — and in its second season, finally starts to thrive.
When it premiered in 2023, the series from Josh Singer and Laura Dave, who wrote the book on which it is based, was a quiet journey through the veil of a relationship’s lies. Garner plays Hannah Hall, a houseboat-residing Sausalito art dealer whose seemingly perfect relationship with software engineer Owen (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) is upended when he disappears, leaving her and his teenage daughter Bailey (Angourie Rice) to unravel his secret past.
In short, and pardon the light spoilers, Owen is on the run from his former father-in-law Nicholas (David Morse), who vowed revenge on him after he turned state’s evidence on Nicholas’ clients, the Campano crime family. That betrayal led to the death of Nicholas’ daughter, Owen’s wife and Bailey’s mother, Katherine. Season 1 was perfectly fine. An enjoyable but rather low-stakes drama about the impact on those within the blast radius of someone’s secrets. It felt like the beach read that inspired it, one that fades from memory the second it’s over.
But then Dave wrote a sequel and Apple renewed its show for a second season. Was this necessary? As a viewer, not really. The season conveniently ended with Hannah and Bailey accepting protection from Nicholas, who recognized the Campanos were still out for blood. They settle into a comfortable but cautious life under the watchful eye of Nicholas and the mob, and that was that. There was a sense of delicate harmony and it felt like every bit of tension had been wrung out of this story. And yet, this sophomore run proves Dave, Singer and Garner, who serves as executive producer alongside Reese Witherspoon, heard viewers loud and clear. If people who managed to find this show in the first place were ever going to come back for more, things needed to ramp up.
Season 2 feels more agile and ambitious in response to that from the start. After five years of quiet, a death in the family affords the Campanos the chance to cancel all peace deals and reignite their blood feud. Hannah learns this when an assassin arrives at her front door in a scene that finally cashes in on Garner’s action star power and “Alias” bonafides.
Without spoiling what comes of this resurrected threat, the series quickly shifts from a sleuthing drama into a propulsive moving target. Gone are the days spent pensively sulking on Hannah’s stunning houseboat, as are episodes of tracking down libraries and old math professors for clues to Owen’s past. In Season 2, the series knows the threat in front of it and goes after it. It revisits Hannah’s own family drama with her estranged mother (guest star Rita Wilson), it makes good on those life-or-death stakes it only previously teased and ultimately sends Hannah, Bailey and Owen into a global struggle for survival, one that proves time doesn’t heal all wounds.
Licking those wounds is the nefarious Campano family: the steely patriarch (John Noble), the reckless heir (Luke Kirby) and, in a deliciously complicated role, the distant but mysterious daughter (Judy Greer). Greer’s role here will get plenty of press because of her rom-com past with Garner (“13 Going On 30” hive unite!), but the series is mindful of those expectations going in. Singer and Dave wisely bide their time in revealing the exact relationship these longtime off-screen friends will have in this new context, and it uses Greer sparingly to do so. If their reunion is the reason for tuning back in, viewers will have to be patient.
But patience will have to be a virtue across the whole season as well, as the creators expand their world view to varying degrees of success. The new gallery of assailants in Hannah and Bailey’s path, along with last season’s holdovers like increasingly volatile U.S. Marshal Grady Bradford (Augusto Aguilera), gives the series more stories to service than ever before. Some are given better material than others. But at least it feels like something — anything — is happening. Season 1’s biggest thrill was when Hannah pulled up a seat at Nicholas’ family bar in Austin. In Season 2’s third act, characters will be issuing threats along the Seine in Paris. We’ve come so far!
With greater stakes, Rice also gets to play Bailey with a bit more agency after the five-year time jump at the end of last season. Now in college and finding her voice as an aspiring playwright, Rice pulls from Bailey something more profound, somewhere between a hurt daughter and a woman ready to put to bed the choices of her family. She’s not the only one drowning out the noise of others.
Garner is, unsurprisingly, the MVP here because the show understands she is most engaging as an actress and as a series lead when she isn’t given a chance to catch her breath. She’s commanding out front of a big, bold, messy mission that’s more about seizing control of her life, versus Season 1’s pursuit of understanding someone else’s. This season, the last thing Owen told her is no longer relevant because Hannah is the one speaking and Garner is having a blast demanding she be heard.
“The Last Thing He Told Me” Season 2 releases new episodes Fridays on Apple TV.