Murder in a Small Town arrived on Fox early in the fall 2024 TV schedule, with the murder mystery series starring Rossif Sutherland as Police Chief Karl Alberg and Smallville's Kristin Kreuk as local librarian Cassandra Lee. Essential to the series was the refreshing approach to romance between Alberg and Cassandra, and the first season ended with a thrilling two-parter. It still didn't answer a question that had bugged me all season, though: how can a murder mystery show keep having two leads when one of the leads often has nothing to do with murder or mysteries?
Well, when I was fortunate enough to speak with executive producer Jeff Wachtel about Murder in a Small Town Season 2 (hopefully as part of the 2025 TV schedule), I asked: is difficult to find ways to include Cassandra – played wonderfully by Kristin Kreuk – in stories when the crime is so much more central to the story than her work in the library and community? Wachtel answered with an explanation that makes so much sense, saying:
The answer is yes, it is. I have done shows where the spouse was not as integrated, and I used to joke that they would be 'chopping vegetables scenes' where whoever the lead was would call home, and he's usually a guy, and there's the wife chopping vegetables and cooking, holding the phone in the crook of her neck. So she's not the A-story, and she can't be too much into the A-story or else it starts to feel too convenient. The way we're answering that in the second season, without going deep into spoiler alert territory, is she did just run for local office.
Cassandra wasn't quite sidelined in a way that she would just be chopping vegetables whenever Alberg gave her a call, but the EP's response made me feel a whole lot more validated about wondering all season how a show with two leads could focus so much on just one of their stories. It would be awfully contrived if the crime each week somehow involved the library, and pretty unfair to Cassandra if she just got kidnapped on a weekly basis to bring her into the A-story!
And it would be a shame if Kristin Kreuk had to indefinitely come across as a second lead rather than a co-lead, especially after what Rossif Sutherland said about her being cast. Fortunately, the Murder in a Small Town team used the Season 1 finale to set up how Cassandra can get more focus with her own stories in a second season. (You can stream all of Season 1 with a Hulu subscription.) While he didn't dig too deeply into spoilers for what comes next, Wachtel elaborated on plans for Kristin Kreuk's character in the future:
Let's hope she gets elected, and then she's going to have her own stories, some of which may well run counter to Karl's agenda, because she doesn't really strike me as a law and order type. We'll see these two very powerful, intelligent, opinionated people [and] I think we're going to have a lot of fun with them. Not just romantic discourse, but social political discourse as well, as they have two different approaches to the community and crime, etc. I think that's the organic way that we'll get to build her into big stories in the second season.
The Season 1 finale did end with Cassandra deciding that she could live with Alberg's work as a cop, which truly is a sign of how much she cares for him after her harrowing experience with the kidnapper! The pair shared a big kiss before the final credits rolled, ending the first season on a high note while still planting seeds for the future.
For Karl, his second daughter will be coming to Gibsons and giving him a full house. Plus, serial killer Tommy Cummins was still alive, and he now has reason to hold a grudge against Alberg and his family. Cassandra's Season 2 arc feels more defined, as she told Alberg her plan to run for town council and made it clear enough that loving him doesn't mean blindly supporting the police department. Plus, there is the ongoing mystery of what happened in Sacramento.
All in all, I'm hoping more than ever after Jeff Wachtel answered my big question about Kristin Kreuk as Cassandra that Murder in a Small Town scores a second season sooner rather than later. The executive producer told CinemaBlend that "Fox gave us some money for scripts" and they have the "first four episodes broken with full stories," so they've already made progress before getting the official word.
For now, you can always revisit the full first season streaming with a Hulu subscription. I'm tempted to do just that this winter and watch Cassandra's stories secure in the knowledge that there are bigger plans for her in Season 2.
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