Big Sky is coming back to ABC for a second season. Big Little Lies creator David E. Kelley also created Big Sky, which is a crime drama show based on C.J. Box’s book series. Big Sky stars Kylie Bunbury as private detective Cassie Dewell and Katheryn Winnick as former police officer Jenny Hoyt. An unlikely duo, Dewell and Hoyt team up for the sake of finding two kidnapped sisters who went missing while driving on Montana’s isolated roads. The second half of the first season premiered on April 13 with kidnapper Ronald Pergman (Brian Geraghty) on the run. While Hoyt and Dewell are still set on finding Pergman, they become preoccupied trying to clear Hoyt’s ex-boyfriend’s name after he is accused of assaulting a woman.
ABC has officially picked up Big Sky for season 2, according to Deadline. Kelley will still be part of the decision-making process as an executive producer, but he will no longer be the showrunner. He is passing that torch to Elwood Reid, who joined Big Sky as an executive producer for the second half of season 1.
Big Sky left viewers stunned when the show first premiered because it killed off Ryan Phillippe’s character, Cody Hoyt. Although Phillippe was the biggest name attached to the project, his absence means that strong and smart female characters dominate the series when it comes to the protagonists. Jesse James Keitel also made history as the first non-binary series regular on primetime television for playing Jerrie Kennedy, a transfeminine musician and sex worker.
While Big Sky has made some steps in the right direction, the show has faced backlash for failing to represent Indigenous women, who constitute a large percentage of the missing and murdered women in Montana despite Indigenous people only making up about 6.5% of the state’s population. Big Sky’s second season is an opportunity for the show to make adjustments regarding its representation.
