Serial got a second season, so why not the show that parodied it? Netflix’s American Vandal, which started as a dick-obsessed true-crime sendup before revealing itself to be a meta commentary and riveting true-crime mystery in its own right, has been renewed for a second season. Details are sparse, but on Thursday, Netflix dropped a cryptic teaser for the new season, set to come out in 2018, featuring a whole new slew of students and mockumentarian Peter Maldonado (Tyler Alvarez) intoning, “Can you be born … above the law?”
The teaser all but confirms that American Vandal is moving on from Season 1’s story line, which centered on the mystery of who “drew the dicks” on 27 high school faculty members’ cars, and the one class clown (Jimmy Tatro) who had been falsely accused. That’s probably for the better: While it was a thrill to watch Peter and his pal Sam Ecklund (Griffin Gluck) obsess over the minutiae of spray-painted dicks in a parking lot—and things like whether a lack of ball hairs on the drawings meant the main suspect was innocent—American Vandal is better suited as an anthology series.
So what’s to glean about this new mystery? Not much yet, but unlike the yearbook photos from Season 1’s Hanover High, this new school has students abiding by a formal dress code. Look for Peter’s detective skills to turn toward a more privileged set of kids—perhaps American Vandal is poised to tackle teens and “affluenza.” We’ll have to wait and see if Season 2 is as, well, phallic as the first.
