‘Chad Powers’ Co-Creator Michael Waldron on That Finale Twist, a Possible Season 3 and Lane Kiffin

Spoilers ahead for Season 2 of “Chad Powers.”

When director/co-creator Michael Waldron—known for his extensive work in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, particularly 2021’s Loki—and actor Glen Powell—the Hollywood hunk of the moment—sat down to draft Chad Powers, their high-energy television dramedy about a college football quarterback in disguise, they immediately envisioned the story with a three-season arc. Luckily for audiences, who have grown quite fond of the character over the last 12 months, that is certainly still the case.

“We wanna do it. We want to make one more. We’ll figure out how to do that,” Waldron says, shortly before the series’s Season 2 release on Sept. 3. “Obviously, at the end of [S2], the team has made the playoff, and we wanna see this through and into the playoff, however far the [team can] go.”

There has been no renewal order from Hulu just yet, which is, at least, relatively par for the course; the show wasn’t picked up for a second run until December 2025, roughly two months after its initial premiere. But viewers will certainly be hoping for a final act after watching Chad Powers’s sophomore season, which is funnier, whackier and all-around stronger than its already well-done debut.

This new crop of six episodes, all of which dropped Thursday on Hulu, picks up right where the last six left off. The aptly named Catfish, quarterbacked by the wild and wonderful Chad Powers, are on to their next game after defeating Georgia in the Season 1 finale, when Coach Jake Hudson’s daughter and assistant Ricky Hudson identified disgraced QB Russ Holliday as the man behind Powers’s uncomfortably large prosthetic nose. But as the Catfish’s dream campaign wears on, Holliday struggles mightily not only to keep up with his deep-seated ruse, but also to contend with his complicated feelings for Ricky, an off-limits object of his desire.

“Because the show already has this one big suspension of disbelief element that [Russ] is pulling this off, everything else has to be completely grounded in the real world. We have to just treat this like, ‘What if it was actually happening?’” Waldron explains of the show’s dramatic evolution. “Interrogating it in a real way led to a dramatic story, and that was just the one we wanted to tell. It lent itself to this more thrilling tone that still, hopefully, we're able to find some heart and comedy in.”

“Thrilling” is, indeed, the word. The energy in Season 2 is much more akin to, say, Uncut Gems or Breaking Bad than frequent comp Ted Lasso, which boasts all the heart of Chad Powers but none of the bite. Even the style of filmmaking subtly changes in this second outing; to communicate the walls closing in and the heat turning up on anti-hero Holliday, Waldron and the show’s director of photography opted for lots of anxiety-inducing handheld shots and whip pans, better “[orienting] the audience in Russ’s headspace as he’s trying to pull this off.”

The show’s synthy score was also altered in service of that tonal shift, going from an “80s-style, Harold Faltermeyer-inspired” piece, Waldron says, to something more modern and intense.

wynn everett, blonde woman in a fur coat, chad powers, hulu — Cutthroat booster Tricia Yeager, played by Wynn Everett, emerges as the series next villain by the end of the season. | Courtesy of Disney+

By the end, the killer twists and turns culminate in yet another finale cliffhanger, this one involving sweet-talking and glory-hungry booster Tricia Yeager, who Waldron describes as “the one true sociopath in the show.” After a desperate Danny Cruz informs Yeager of Holliday’s con, the SGU die-hard opts not to out the two co-conspirators, but instead trap them inside the ruse, lest they blow up her beloved football program in their wake.

“She cares only about winning, and so she’s the most dangerous person for the secret to be revealed to,” Waldron explains. “I think next season, our heroes having to work for her, maybe at a time where Russ was finally ready to let go of Chad, is gonna be some really fun drama heading in that final stretch.”

Despite the vibe shift, the show’s topical, sporty sensibilities, of course, remain. Both Waldron and Powell are massive college football fans (Waldron a Georgia grad, and Powell a Texas acolyte) and their familiarity with the realm shows through in even the most inconsequential of moments. In one instance, as Yeager is toying with the idea of replacing Coach Hudson, multiple characters are hilariously quick to suggest Lane Kiffin, the rabble-rousing Tigers coach with famously loose allegiances. (“Those references would probably … work in any season, wouldn’t [they]?” Waldron quipped.)

Another example: Season 2 villain Gerry—the demoted, incel-like backup who blames Chad for his fall from grace before uncovering the truth—opts to lord Russ’s secret over him in the form of a betslip, essentially blackmailing the QB into blowing a game. It was a perfectly contemporary plot choice; these days, there is no football without gambling, a reality that has (unfortunately) infiltrated the college world, as well. Even better, circumventing the parlay’s various legs made for a “fun puzzle for our heroes to solve in the finale,” Waldron said.

man in a mask, chad powers, colton ryan, hulu — Backup QB Gerry, played by Colton Ryan, is determined to take back control of his life by outing Chad as a phony. | Courtesy of Disney+

As for the storylines he is most excited about this season, the director quickly pointed to that of Russ and Ricky, who have been dancing around their attraction to one another since the show first began. That “will they, won’t they” energy is then turned up a notch when the pair must regularly collude in Season 2.

“I’m always about Russ and Ricky,” he says. “It’s probably because I think that Ricky … if Russ could win the love of a woman like Ricky, then maybe that does mean that he's been redeemed.”

Redemption? Raised stakes? What is this, HBO? It might sound a bit surreal to be speaking about a college football comedy in such serious terms, especially when said comedy was born of an Eli Manning sketch. But that is nothing more than a testament to the strength of the character and the world Waldron and Powell have created, with a framing we have seen before, but never like this.

“It probably wasn't until Glen and I really started talking about it—and it was Glen, I’ve said this before—Glen was like, ‘The show’s gotta be about a guy in a mask.’ I was like, ‘We can't actually do Mrs. Doubtfire as a show. How would you do it?’” Waldron said.

“And Glen was like, ’Exactly. That’s the show.’”

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