For Danny McBride's return to TV following the end of Kenny Powers' reign on Eastbound & Down, the actor unsurprisingly co-created an even wilder and more extreme comedy with Vice Principals. The HBO series brought its hilarious nine-episode first season to a close last September, and it's pretty much been radio silence ever since. Until now! HBO dropped the first teaser trailer for Season 2, along with a September premiere date. Check it out!
Now, part of the reason why all things were quiet about Vice Principals Season 2 is because Season 1 ended on a pretty memorable cliffhanger that completely upended the newly achieved happiness of Danny McBride's Gamby. In the finale's last moments, a masked man shot Gamby, and even though fans didn't really think the show's star and co-creator would kill himself off before Season 2, the scene was superbly intense, and no one from the show has tipped their hat to Gamby surviving or dying. Even the trailer above doesn't really tell us anything about what happened after that fateful day.
But that's fine by us! I'm sure whatever explanation McBride and his frequent creative partner Jody Hill have crafted will be perfectly suitable for Vice Principals' deconstructed sensibilities. I mean, it was decided that the best way to tease the impending second (and final) season of Vice Principals was to apply some war paint to Gamby and put him in a Native American headdress and have him stare down a tiger. Nothing about this should work, but for whatever reason, it does.
With a tagline of "Revenge is in session," Vice Principals seems to be giving Gamby another target for his rage; one that'll be like Belinda Brown and Ray Liptrapp put together. Assuming, of course, that the masked shooter's identity isn't one of the people already mentioned. And if Lee himself didn't already get some payback by shooting Gamby, then he'll definitely be looking to serve justice in Season 2. Perhaps Lee is meant to be represented by the tiger, although I think Walton Goggins has more teeth.
Vice Principals was created specifically as a two-season concept, and those seasons were filmed back-to-back, which kept the energy up during production. We're still not quite sure how things will play out, but we can't wait to see it happen. Because of how intentionally ham-fisted the show gets with stereotypes, Season 1 was not immediately beloved by many viewers out there -- though it got the approval of one of the best writers on TV right now -- so I'm highly intrigued to see if the show will continue building on its emotionally human late-season installments from last year, or if we'll get right back into Walton Goggins hollering and busting up people's houses.
With Game of Thrones likely knocking Vice Principals out of contention for a summer run, the comedy will debut Season 2 on HBO starting Sunday, September 17, at 10:30 p.m. Head to our summer premiere schedule to see when all the latest shows will be popping up in primetime.
