‘Ripley’ Grifted Its Way Into Our Hearts, So Will We Get a Second Season?

Ripley is the latest screen adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel, The Talented Mr. Ripley. With stylish black and white cinematography and an incredibly nuanced performance by Andrew Scott as grifter Tom Ripley, audiences were left pondering just one question: Will we ever get a Season 2?

Season 1 of Ripley features eight episodes, all written and directed by showrunner Steven Zaillian. Let’s dive into what we know so far about a potential Season 2 of the Netflix series Ripley.

There’s plentiful source material

Highsmith wrote a total of five psychological thrillers featuring the character of Tom Ripley: The Talented Mr. Ripley; Ripley Under Ground; Ripley’s Game; The Boy Who Followed Ripley; and Ripley Under Water. She passed away in 1995, just a few years before a blockbuster film version of The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) premiered in theaters starring Jude Law, Matt Damon, and Gwyneth Paltrow.

The show follows the first book, which follows a low-level criminal called Tom Ripley who strives for a better life but has always been scraping to get by using forgeries and cunning. Believing Tom to be a friend of his errant son Dickie (Johnny Flynn), wealthy shipping magnate Herbert Greenleaf (Kenneth Lonergan) tracks Tom down and asks for his help bringing Dickie back home to New York City. Dickie has been lazing about in Europe for years, and his family wants him to grow up and start a career.

Tom eagerly accepts their offer to pay his way to Italy, where Dickie is living with his girlfriend Marge Sherwood (Dakota Fanning). But instead of convincing Dickie to go home, he slowly ingratiates himself into Dickie’s world to gain his trust. Marge is suspicious of Tom from the start, and with good reason; when cornered, Tom does not hesitate to use violence to solve his problems. After dispatching with Dickie, Tom assumes his identity (and his trust fund), and so begins the cat-and-mouse game between Tom and Inspector Pietro Ravini (Maurizio Lombardi), the Italian detective trying to track him down.

What are our chances for a second season?

We’d say the chances are good! So far the series has been positively received by critics and audiences alike, and Season 1 of Ripley is so open-ended that there’s plenty of room to continue the story. In fact, Zaillian told The Wrap he feels more seasons are definitely possible, noting, “We have the rights to all the books, so we could do it. I’ll need a little break but yeah, I think he’s a good enough character that you could do more.”

In a different interview with The Wrap, leading man Andrew Scott indicated that he’d be on board as well, but not right away. “It’s been such a long, long process with this one,” said the actor. “I’m just very interested to see how this one goes out. To be honest, after this year, I’m just looking forward to taking a break.”

Speaking with Collider, Zaillian confirmed that there’s ample source material to explore in subsequent seasons, although it took nearly five years of hard work for his vision to make it to the small screen for Season 1. He’s not ready to jump into another 5-year project just yet, but isn’t ruling it out. “[In] terms of the character continuing, yes, I think there’s a lot more with Tom Ripley,” he said. “Tom Ripley goes through a lot of changes over the course of the five books, and they’re all interesting, so, yeah, absolutely. And there have been movies made about the other books, too. So, given the right circumstances, yes.”

It’s a definite maybe!

It sounds like all of the major players are ready and willing to make Season 2 of Ripley. We hope they do, because this is one of the most beautiful and brilliant series Netflix has ever produced, and we can’t wait to see what happens to Tom Ripley in the next installment. In the meantime, all episodes of Ripley are now streaming on Netflix.

(featured image: Netflix)