Murderbot Season 2 Is Coming, But The Sci-Fi Series Faces One Major Challenge

There's some great news for fans of the Apple TV+ sci-fi comedy series "Murderbot," though it's sadly not a spin-off that's entirely just full-length episodes of "Sanctuary Moon." We'll still probably get more chances to see our favorite fictional space soap opera, however, as Apple has announced that "Murderbot" has been greenlit for a second season. That's right folks, we're talking more murder, more bot, and more of star Alexander Skarsgård absolutely killing it as an awkward weirdo robot who just wants to watch his shows in peace instead of getting dragged into human nonsense.

The show, based on the first novella in Martha Wells' "The Murderbot Diaries" series, is a tremendous amount of fun with a terrific ensemble cast that helps make Skarsgård's dryness work and makes this unbelievable world feel more real. There's just one teensy problem for fans who have gotten attached to the scrappy hippies from the Preservation Alliance: Murderbot (Skarsgård) leaves them behind in the second book, going to work for a new group of irritating humans. We know he doesn't exactly feel a connection to them, but audiences are bound to miss these characters that we've gotten to know for the whole first season. Can "Murderbot" work with a whole new supporting cast? Probably! But it's going to take some doing. 

In the "Murderbot" books, Murderbot leaves the PresAux team after the events we're seeing depicted in season 1, though we do learn a few updates through remote check-ins (aww, Murderbot almost cares!). That means that, presumably, we'll be meeting an entirely new supporting cast in season 2 and might only get the teeniest glimpses of Bharadwaj (Tamara Podemski), Ratthi (Akshay Khanna), Pin-Lee (Sabrina Wu), Arada (Tattiawna Jones), Mensah (Noma Dumezweni), and even grumpy Gurathin (David Dastmalchian). That's kind of a bummer, because the show has done a lot of hard work to make these characters lovable and it's hard to not want to continue to follow them and keep them in Murderbot's orbit. 

While a new season with a new cast of humans to annoy Murderbot should work pretty well because Skarsgård so perfectly understands the assignment and the screenwriting is top notch, the new humans will have some seriously big shoes to fill. Fans who haven't read the books are sure to be a little unsettled by the cast shake-up, but as long as the tone stays firmly between comedy and sci-fi thriller, "Murderbot" season 2 should be a hit. I just want to find out why Bharadwaj was hoarding soap before she's gone.

"Murderbot" season 1 is available to stream exclusively on AppleTV+.