Somehow it’s been nearly three years since Ali Wong and Steven Yeun teamed up for Netflix’s dark comedy, Beef. While it was a limited series from A24 when it became one of the best shows to binge on Netflix in 2023, its popularity and shower of award-season wins led creator Lee Sung Jin to make the show an anthology, and we finally know more about what to expect.
Along with Beef Season 2 just finding its way on the 2026 Netflix release calendar for this spring, Lee Sung Jin has shared his inspirations for the story. If you’ve been following what we know about Beef Season 2 closely, you may have already been clued in on the plotline. The story will follow three sets of couples, each from different generations who all have ties to an exclusive Southern California country club. Here’s what Lee told Tudum:
The intention with Beef was always to have it in anthology. We wanted the feeling of this season’s beef to be a bit more passive-aggressive… It’s more about the internal repression of rage that you see in the workplace.
There will be a Gen Z couple played by Charles Melton and Cailee Spaeny, who both work at the country club in lower level roles. When they overhear their boss Josh (played by Oscar Isaac) and his wife Lindsay (Carey Mulligan) getting into a heated argument, they decide to record it, and use it against them to get ahead at work. Josh and Lindsay make up the Millennial couple of Beef Season 2. Lee said this about his decision to center the show on couples of multiple generations to Vanity Fair:
I started ruminating a lot on what love means to those different generations. And when you think about time passing, you realize that in your youth, you had all these expectations and promises to yourselves of never becoming like the older generation. But we’re faced with such similar hurdles. Are we going to repeat the same mistakes as those that came before?
When Beef Season 2 was initially casting its leads, reportedly Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway were looked at for the roles. Interestingly enough, both pairs of actors have something in common. Gyllenhaal and Hathaway were both in Brokeback Mountain and Love, and Other Drugs together. When it comes to Isaac and Mulligan, the actors also worked together a couple times before in both Inside Llewyn Davis and Drive.
The creator said he felt their “inherent backstory” makes you “believe them a little bit more.” Josh and Lindsay will play a longtime couple who are dealing with aging and their lives going differently than they expected.
The final couple to know ahead of Beef Season 2 is a wealthy Korean couple, who are taking up ownership of the country club. It’s not clear right now which actors make up the couple specifically, but we know that there’s four Korean actors in Season 2: Minari’s Youn Yuh-jung plays Chairwoman Park, Parasite’s Song Kang-ho plays Dr. Kim, Butterfly actress Seoyeon Jang has the role of Eunice, and the musician BM will play a character named Woosh.
The Korean couple is inspired by Lee’s own experience with being invited into the upper echelon of Korean society following Beef’s success. Between the show being about a younger couple blackmailing their boss to it diving into passive aggression and love, it sounds like we’re getting another great season of Beef to watch and talk about.
You can catch Beef Season 1 with a Netflix subscription, and get ready for Season 2 dropping on the streaming service on April 16.
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