In its first season, The Afterparty, created by Christopher Miller, immediately became one of the best comedies on Apple TV+. A hilarious whodunit with a tremendous ensemble cast and a genuinely engaging mystery, it blended genres and styles to create an inventive and exciting new take on the comedy that, given its structure, almost felt like it couldn’t be replicated. Yet in the second season of The Afterparty, the series has managed to continue the quality and excitement of this concept (with a few exceptions), cementing it as one of the best comedies on TV.

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The second season brings back Aniq (Sam Richardson) and Zoë (Zoë Chao), who are now dating after the events of the first season. They’re off to the wedding of Zoë’s sister, Grace (Poppy Liu), who is getting married to the rich crypto investor and lizard enthusiast Edgar (Zach Woods). The first episode, “Aniq 2: The Sequel,” begins by showing that Edgar was found dead the day after the wedding — and, once again, Aniq and Zoë find themselves in the middle of another murder mystery.

Aniq calls Detective Danner (Tiffany Haddish) who helped solve the murder of Season 1 and has since left the force to write a book about the events. Together, Aniq and Danner investigate the stories of the various potential murders and try to crack the case. Amongst the suspects are Edgar’s loopy mother Isabel (Elizabeth Perkins); his quirky adopted sister Hannah (Anna Konkle); and his business partner, Sebastian (Jack Whitehall). On the bride’s side of the family, the suspects include Grace’s mother and father, Vivian and Ken (Vivian Wu and Ken Jeong); Grace’s long-absent fun uncle, Ulysses (John Cho); and Grace’s ex-boyfriend, Travis (Paul Walter Hauser).

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‘The Afterparty’ Season 2’s “Mind Movies” Are Great, With Some Exceptions
Image via Apple TV+

As with the first season, Detective Danner likes to explore the “mind movies” of each of these suspects, getting an idea of their larger story. For the series, it allows the directors to play with all manner of different genres. For example, “Aniq 2: The Sequel” puts Aniq in an awkward rom-com akin to Meet the Parents, while “Grace” gets a period romance, and “Travis” is told as a hilarious film noir. Even in this second season, creator Christopher Miller and the entire team continue to find smart, fun ways to utilize this jumping of styles and manage to make it never feel like a gimmick.

However, this second season might rely on these singular flashbacks a bit too much. In the first season, The Afterparty gave us the backstories of these characters while also spending plenty of time in the present, as we watched the dynamics between them as they awaited their turn to be questioned. There are still ongoing stories in the present, yet they never feel as interesting as what’s going on in the past. Whereas the first season had the will-they-won’t-they of Aniq and Zoë, or Aniq and his best friend Yasper (Ben Schwartz), Season 2 doesn’t have anything that comes close to those dynamics. The closest we get to something along these lines is Zoë running her own investigation apart from Danner and Aniq’s work, but at least in the first nine episodes (the tenth episode wasn’t screened for critics), these modern-day stories don’t have the same excitement as the flashbacks.

Yet the flashbacks and the exploration of different styles are just as fun in this season as they were in the last, and maybe even more focused than before. The aforementioned “Travis” is a particular highlight, thanks to an incredibly earnest and hilarious performance by Hauser, who believes himself to be a detective with his conspiracy theories and love of Reddit. The style of each episode is a delight, especially when it takes you by surprise or goes with a tone that pulls the rug out from under this investigation. It’s also a great way to see just how versatile these actors are, and in the case of Woods, we see how easily he can fit into any style with perfection. Our viewpoint of who Edgar is evolves over the season, and Woods always does a fantastic job of making any possible version of himself seem like it could be the real one.

The biggest misstep in this season, however, comes from a choice of one episode style in particular. While most of the episodes go for a broader genre or style of film, “Hannah” attempts to recreate Wes Anderson’s distinct tone, which ends up as little more than a collection of his eccentricities rather than what makes his films great. It also doesn’t help that the timing of this episode isn’t ideal, considering the hollow attempts to make things look Andersonian on social media, and the fact that Anderson just put out one of his best films ever this month with Asteroid City. It’s clear that this episode, which is largely a take on The Royal Tenenbaums, is done out of love, but it also feels relatively empty—a shame considering the large stakes of the episode itself. Yet this season does show that focusing on specific filmmakers can work, as one particularly melodramatic episode evokes the films of Douglas Sirk effectively, but it, unfortunately, misses the mark when it comes to its version of an Anderson theme.

‘The Afterparty’ Is Still One of the Most Inventive Shows on Today
Image via Apple TV+

Yet these are all relatively minor qualms when it comes to the quality of the second season overall. The greatness of this cast rivals that of the first season, and the mystery is just as compelling as the last. The Afterparty is excellent at making you feel like you’re a step ahead, only to pull the rug out from under the viewer, twisting this mystery in ways that could’ve never been expected, all through the varying perspectives of this great cast. Like a great comedy, this season is always amusing and often laugh-out-loud hilarious, and as a mystery, it always knows exactly how to keep the viewer on their toes. For a show to both excel at comedy at this level and at its central mystery is truly something special.

The Afterparty is a series that could’ve easily been a one-and-done, yet this fantastic second season shows there are plenty of ways to keep this party going. It remains imaginative and ingenious in how it plays with what we expect from comedies and mysteries. Even if some of the ideas don’t entirely work as well as they did in the first season, The Afterparty takes interesting swings that continue to make this one of the most innovative and creative shows on today.

Rating: A-

The first two episodes of The Afterparty come to Apple TV+ on July 12. New episodes air every Wednesday going forward.