Naomi Watts Says "The Watcher"'s Central Mystery Remains Unsolved Heading Into Season 2

Updated on 4/20/2023 at 2:15 PM

Keep those eyes open, thriller fans: a second season of Netflix's popular true-crime, horror-mystery series "The Watcher" is coming. That doesn't mean that fans will get answers anytime soon, though.

Based on a true story, the first season of "The Watcher" follows the Brannock family, who move into their dream home in the New Jersey suburbs. Almost immediately, they start receiving anonymous threatening letters from someone obsessed with the house who identifies themselves only as The Watcher. As the Brannocks have startling encounters in their home and with their new neighbors (who also keep a disturbingly close eye on the house), Dean (Bobby Cannavale) and Nora (Naomi Watts) Brannock's unease quickly turns to terror.

The show's central mystery — the identity of the Watcher — isn't revealed in the first season, and it turns out that even the main cast is completely in the dark going into the second. "We didn't know, and we still don't know," Watts told Entertainment Weekly on April 19. "I loved that. I loved not knowing. I think that we knew the story and that was unresolved, and I liked how this couple — who started off in a great place, seemed to be enjoying life and reaching their dreams and still having sex, everything is peachy — become unraveled by this situation and turn on each other. They tried first to attack the problem together very much as a united front, but they turn on each other. That's good drama."

Variety originally broke the news about the impending second season of Ryan Murphy's hit in November 2022. For fans, who also can't let go of the mystery, we have everything there is to know about the second season of "The Watcher."

"The Watcher" Season 2 Plot

The first season leaves plenty of mysteries to solve, including which events are real, who is the little girl, and who is The Watcher? As for Dean and Nora, at the end of the first season, both of them return separately to watch their old house. Perhaps they simply want to know if the new occupants are also being terrorized, but with their own spying, Dean and Nora have unwittingly become part of the problem. They are now among the people who can't stop watching the house, and their marriage may be suffering. As Watts told "Entertainment Weekly in October 2022, "Now, they're just trying to figure out who the other [really] is."

"The Watcher" Season 2 Cast

In the season one finale, private investigator Theodora Birch (Noma Dumezweni) dies of cancer after falsely confessing to being The Watcher, but all of the other cast members could return for the second season. Watts has said that the actors do not know who The Watcher is either, which suggests all of our favorite suspicious characters will likely return, from Watts and Cannavale to Jennifer Coolidge, Mia Farrow, and Henry Hunter Hall.

Will The Watcher Be Revealed in Season 2?

"The Watcher" is based on true events detailed in an article written for The Washington Post in 2015 about someone who terrorized a real-life family out of their home with anonymous letters. In real life, no charges were ever filed against anyone for the letters. Will the series stray from the true story to reveal The Watcher's identity, or will it lean into the terror, obsession, and paranoia that comes from never getting answers? We'll have to wait and see.

"The Watcher" Season 2 Release Date

Netflix has not yet announced a premiere date for season two. Given the first season was released in October 2022, it's likely the second season will be slated for late 2023 at the earliest.