The 'Glow' Season 2 Premiere Date Was Just Announced & It's Sooner Than You Think
Break out the spandex, folks — your fave rag-tag Gorgeous Ladies of Wresting are returning to the ring. Netflix announced Wednesday, April 18, that GLOW Season 2 will be body-slamming into your TV set as soon as this summer. The sophomore season of the Golden Globe-nominated series is set to start streaming June 29, 2018.
Of course, a unique show with a charming ensemble like GLOW wouldn't just reveal good news like this via a boring old press release. The GLOW gals, donning their best leg warmers and big hair, don't care attitudes, put together a music video to announce its upcoming return and the result is pure bodacious '80s magic. The cast came together for a clip that puts their lip-syncing skills to the test as they get down and sing along to the 1983 hit "Maniac," a song made famous thanks to the dance drama Flashdance. The video ends with a neon sign that reads: "The girls are back in town June 29." Take note, every other TV show. Now that's a way to get fans pumped for Season 2. Oh, how we've missed these ladies. My summer suddenly just got so much more exciting.
GLOW Season 1 debuted on Netflix on June 23 of last year. The critically acclaimed comedy focuses on the lives of the women who made up the televised professional wresting circuit of the 1980s, the Gorgeous Ladies of Wresting. Yes — G.L.O.W. was a real thing back in the day, but the show is a fictionalized account of the experience. Alison Brie shines as a plucky struggling actress who makes the most of her campy new role, and Perri Gilpin also stars as her BFF-turned-co-star Debbie, an out-of-work soap opera alum. While Brie, Gilpin, and Marc Maron — the comedian plays GLOW's washed-up director Sam Sylvia — take up a lot of the series screen time, the entire supporting cast serves up some seriously standout performances from talents like Britney Young, Gayle Rankin, and singer Kate Nash.
GLOW touches on the offensive stereotypes that were exploited for the women's respective wresting "personas" — for example, Betty Gilpin's Debbie embodies the all-American "Liberty Belle," while Ellen Wong's Jenny is dubbed "Fortune Cookie" and Sunita Mani's Archie is urged to take on incarnate "Beirut the Mad Bomber." Season 2 will explore what happens when G.L.O.W. hits the small screen, and how its content impacts its audience as well as its cast members. “Honestly we take it so slow in season one — G.L.O.W. is not in the world in our narrative yet,” executive producer Liz Flahive explained to EW. “They’ve shot a pilot in front of an audience, but it hasn’t gone beyond that in terms of people watching. So the idea of how these characters are in the world and how that hits our women will be an interesting part of our story.”
GLOW was one of 2017's most talked-about new series, earning a handful of acclaim, including a Golden Globe nod for Alison Brie and four SAG Award nominations. A second season was confirmed last August and plot details to come are relatively slim, but fans should definitely expect more crazy stunts. “I mean, I just had a wrestling match with a character that won’t be named, and a week later, I still feel like my soul was in a five-car pileup accident — and it feels amazing," Betty Gilpin revealed of the show's grueling physical element.
“A new aspect to this season that is sort of the polar opposite of last season is that we start to see some competitive aspects coming into the women’s lives in respect to each other,” Alison Brie teased to HelloGiggles on the show's narrative evolution. “Now they’re having to compete for air time, whose matches are going to be the best on the show, things like that. So it is sort of a new thing that we’re playing with.”
Season 2 of GLOW hits Netflix Friday, June 29. I'll be over here perusing Etsy for vintage neon leotards until then.
