Warning - this article contains major spoilers for Poker Face season 1.
After a hiatus of over two years, the much-anticipated second season of Poker Face is set to premiere this week.
The popular series, crafted by Knives Out director Rian Johnson, features Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale, a casino employee with an extraordinary knack for detecting lies instantly.
Charlie finds herself on the run after exposing her boss, Sterling Frost Jr's (portrayed by Adrien Brody) corrupt activities. Her unique ability proves useful as she encounters various murders and cover-ups in each episode during her journey.
With Cliff LeGrand (Benjamin Bratt), the casino's head of security, hot on her heels, Charlie can't stay in one place for too long. So, where will the eagerly awaited second season of Poker Face lead her?
Before we delve into that, let's recap how Charlie escaped her most recent predicament....
What happened at the end of Poker Face season 1?While the majority of the first season's episodes saw Charlie unraveling different gruesome deaths, the finale, The Hook, circles back to the initial incident that forced our unlikely detective to flee.
In the pilot episode of Poker Face, Dead Man's Hand, Sterling Frost Jr takes his life after Charlie tarnishes his casino's reputation by revealing a fixed poker game.
This leaves Frost Jr's father, Sterling Frost Sr (Ron Perlman), seeking revenge, leading him to send Cliff to eliminate her.
However, as we rejoin Cliff in the finale, a year has elapsed and he's grown weary of pursuing her across the country. In desperation, he forms an unlikely alliance with Frost Sr's adversary Beatrix Hasp (Rhea Perlman) to remove him from the equation.
Upon receiving news that Charlie's body is in a Colorado morgue, Cliff investigates only to find Morty Bernstein's (Stephanie Hsu) body instead, following the case of mistaken identity in the previous episode, Escape From S*** Mountain.
Venturing to the nearby hospital to check on the unidentified woman from the scene, Cliff discovers Charlie alive and well, with Frost Sr instructing him to allow her time to recuperate. Two months later, Cliff welcomes her in the parking lot upon her discharge.
They return to the Atlantic City casino where Charlie has a meeting with Frost Sr, who drops a shocking revelation; he no longer holds her responsible for his son's death and proposes a job offer. It appears he's aware of Cliff's pact with Hasp and is prepared to provide Charlie with $500,000 and absolve her if she informs him of any falsehoods during a meeting with her and the other crime families.
However, the situation takes a dramatic twist when Frost Sr presents Charlie with a gift box containing a firearm; the lights go out, revealing Sr's glow-in-the-dark poker chip, two gunshots are heard, and Sr is found dead. Cliff calls for security, accusing Charlie of shooting his boss, and the scene ends with a shot of a discarded gun with a smoking barrel on the floor.
A flashback reveals the full extent of Cliff's deal with Beatrix, where they conspire to make Frost Sr's death appear accidental and frame Charlie for it. Cliff had cunningly placed a decoy gun in the gift box, manipulated the power to cut out, and provided Sr with a glowing chip to facilitate his assassination in the dark.
Fortunately, Charlie manages to escape and contacts Agent Clark (Simon Helberg), who advises her to find a safe place. She hitches a ride on a bachelorette party bus, amusingly picking up a penis ring along the way, before reuniting with her sister, Emily (Clea DuVall), who gives her a frosty reception.
To her dismay, Charlie also finds her escape boat has been sabotaged.
Feeling cornered, she decides to reach out to Cliff, who agrees to meet but sneakily informs the police about her location. During their meeting, Charlie discusses Sr's death, with Cliff carefully choosing his words to conceal his plot.
Cliff tries to convince Charlie that they can flee together, then attempts to trap her below deck as the police approach. However, Charlie uncovers the scheme when she finds the blacklight poker chips.
Using the penis ring to deliver a powerful punch, she stuns Cliff and dives into the water to evade capture. But her swift escape turns out to be unnecessary, as the police are actually there to arrest Cliff for the murders from the first episode, having found incriminating evidence on Sr's tape recorder.
Charlie finally reclaims her cherished Barracuda from Agent Clark, seemingly slipping away untouched, but then the phone rings with an ominous message from Beatrix. She warns Charlie that she's embroiled in conflict with the other four crime families and assures her newly minted "fully modernised crime syndicate" will hunt down Charlie to kill her unless she consents to become Beatrix's personal human lie detector.
In a flippant retort to Beatrix's question about the longevity of her evasion, Charlie quips: "I don't know, B. Let's all of us find out together."
The season wraps up with Charlie smashing her phone and kicking back with a beer, her itinerant existence set to continue. Yet the burning question remains - how soon will Beatrix close in on her in the next season?
Make sure to watch the upcoming instalment for answers.
Poker Face season 2 premieres Friday, 9th May on Sky Go and NOW.
