This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the series being covered here wouldn’t exist.Sophomore seasons in TV are a gamble by their very nature, especially when the first outing was so successful. Is it possible to recapture the same storytelling energy that was so magical, or is there more evidence to the contrary — that this follow-up season has lost its luster? There might be few shows whose second season almost had more to prove this time around than Minx — which saw itself unceremoniously canceled at the then-HBO Max (despite having received an initial renewal and been mostly through production), only to then be saved approximately a month after that by Starz. In many ways, Minx’s new premium cable home feels like a better fit, given that the existing television catalog consists of so many period dramas — and while this ’70s-set series has definitely veered into comedic territory, Season 2 follows not only the characters at the center of the story but the show itself as it more seriously wrestles with interrogating its own identity.

Season 1 of Minx wrapped up with a tentative alliance reestablished between the magazine’s co-founders, self-professed feminist Joyce Prigger (Ophelia Lovibond) and cigar-chomping adult publisher Doug Renetti (Jake Johnson). After Joyce makes the necessary decision to cut ties between herself and the magazine, Doug shows up on her front doorstep to extend a big-time olive branch between them — come back to Minx, and she’ll be the boss of things, installed in a new place of authority as his superior in all creative decisions. It’s an offer that’s too irresistible to pass up, and as the story picks up with Season 2, it’s clear that it’s paid off — Minx is making headlines left and right for its women-tailored content, but what it really needs now to keep going is funding. Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately, knowing his methods), Doug already has the perfect backer in mind, so all the two of them have to do is convince her to be the money behind the magazine.

RELATED: ‘Minx’ Season 2: Release Date, Cast, New Streaming Home, and Everything We Know So Far

‘Minx’ Season 2 Bares Even More to Its Benefit
Image via Starz

When Minx first premiered, it felt like a refreshing breath of air in the television landscape in more ways than one — and not just because of its willingness to spotlight a type of gaze that’s so often neglected on the small screen. You might have been drawn to the promise of its premise, in buff male bodies unapologetically stripping down left and right, but underneath first-impression nudity existed a deeper emotional center as playing out through its central cast. Naturally, the opposites-attract dynamic between Joyce and Doug is reason alone to watch, with Lovibond and Johnson having the kind of chemistry that makes their sparring a pleasure all its own, but their frequent headbutting isn’t masking over deeper feelings or signaling a culmination of some unconscious attraction later on down the road. These two are diametrically opposed in almost every way, but what one of them lacks, the other offers to fill in the gaps — a necessity in any successful partnership. Doug might be prone to indulging his own delusions of grandeur too often, but he’s a capable businessman with an eye for opportunity. Joyce, on the other hand, has a more logical way of seeing the situation and often has to rein Doug in from his more fanciful ideas, but she’s also a lot less straight-laced than she used to be.

That said, it’s not as if everything is completely smooth sailing within the team, either, and the biggest disruptor of all might also come in the form of the support that Minx needs in order to stay afloat. Constance Papadopoulos (Elizabeth Perkins) is, on the surface, everything Joyce admires; she’s the enigmatic widow of a shipping mogul who has had no problem thriving thanks to her late husband’s fortune, but also has an inherent knack for knowing when someone’s trying to get her to throw money at a worthless investment. Surprisingly, it’s not Doug’s carefully-orchestrated scheme that wins Constance over, but Joyce, who pitches herself on the spot (and in the middle of a competitive dog show, of all places). At first, it seems as though Minx is on track to be more successful than ever with Constance’s money behind it, and Doug and Joyce are confident in their previously-established vision. However, Constance is under the impression that financing things should also give her a voice when it comes to creative decisions — and that clash plays into the season’s biggest dilemma, as Joyce is forced to reexamine not just what Minx represents but the voices it’s been excluding with its aim to cater to women alone.

‘Minx’ Season 2 Goes Through an Identity Crisis — and That’s a Good Thing
Image via Starz

Whether Joyce realizes it or not, Minx is a concept that has grown beyond its initial formation. Although the magazine was first envisioned to give women’s desires the spotlight, it’s since become apparent that its demographic doesn’t only include female readers — a fact that Minx photographer Richie (Oscar Montoya) tries to bring to Joyce’s attention while trying to pin her down for meetings about new centerfold ideas. It seems like an innocuous undercurrent at first, a B-plot that plays mostly in the background of bigger, splashier episodes (like Doug’s decision to host a somewhat-illegal screening of Deep Throat as a means of self-promotion), but it builds into a much more significant arc as the season plays out. On a broader level, it feels like the series itself is taking a necessary beat to interrogate its own feminism, pausing to mention that it’s entirely possible to still be exclusionary when one is only prioritizing white women. Although Joyce has grown leaps and bounds in her own feminist ideals since the beginning of the series, Season 2 reveals that she has some learning to do in evolving beyond the straight female gaze, and it’s an exciting development for the potential future of the magazine as well, even if the choice is bound to ruffle some characters’ feathers.

Joyce isn’t the only character experiencing a bit of an identity crisis this season; her older sister, Shelly (Lennon Parham), is wrestling with somewhat adjacent issues pertaining to her secret affair with Bottom Dollar employee Bambi (Jessica Lowe), which has been going on unbeknownst to Shelly’s husband Lenny (Rich Sommer). What began as an unexpected tryst becomes a storyline that sees Shelly wrestling with her own deeper inclinations and where her preferences might really lie, but she’s also given a thrilling avenue to put her more scandalous adventures down on the page in an anonymous erotica column for Minx. The more that Shelly pours out under the pen name of Bella LaRouche, the closer she gets to understanding herself and what she truly wants, and it’s a self-realization narrative that’s as humorous as it is welcome in terms of the show embracing even more identities. Along similar lines, Doug’s right-hand woman and girlfriend Tina (Idara Victor) is also trying to navigate the role she’s meant to play in this new, more successful version of Minx, and it’s a predicament that might very well not only put her in conflict with Doug but in competition with him for a position that she’s equally qualified for (if not more). While others might be more starstruck by Constance and her confident yet impenetrable veneer, Richie and Tina are among the first to realize that the heiress is not as progressive as she projects herself to be.

‘Minx’ Season 2 Tries to Fit Too Much In
Image via Starz 

The most notable area in which Minx’s new season proves to be somewhat lacking is its pacing. Some of this is a consequence of how much time the story has been given. With only eight episodes making up Season 2, each of them clocking in at around a half hour, there’s only so much room to tell this story, and the side effect is attempting to squeeze too much into a limited duration. This season is also more reliant on time jumps, which propel the plot forward by as much as six months when you almost wish it would take more of an opportunity to slow down and check in with how the magazine’s rapid growth might have an effect on those behind the headlines. Toward the end of the season, when some of the biggest brewing storylines come to a head, you’re left with the feeling that it’s all wrapping up much too soon and that Minx’s latest installment would have benefited more not just from longer episodes but from a higher episode count too. That said, the fact that the biggest quibble hails from wanting to spend more time with these characters is a detraction more in the show’s favor rather than against it.

Ultimately, what worked so well the first time around for Minx is what Season 2 delivers on — but it isn’t just more of the same, either. The characters continue to evolve and grow beyond the roles they inhabited back in Season 1, and the story builds on the successes and failures that are naturally wrapped up in navigating this kind of business venture. None of it would be possible without the writers involved, led by creator and showrunner Ellen Rapoport but also including Ben Karlin, Joel Church-Cooper, Jessica Lamour, Nora Winslow, Sarah LaBrie, Mason Flink, Chris Garcia, and Emma Gase, each of whom contributes episodes to this season that make it just as irresistibly funny, boldly raunchy, and aptly timeless beyond its retro setting. Minx Season 2 more than proves that the show was worth saving and that it deserves to continue on for many more to come.

Rating: B+

Minx Season 2 premieres July 21 on Starz, as well as the STARZ app, all STARZ streaming and on-demand platforms, with new episodes premiering weekly each Friday.