Three years since its premiere in 2015, Netflix's true crime docuseries Making a Murderer is headed back for another installment. While viewers have long-known there would be a follow-up season; they did not know a lot about what it would entail. Well, Netflix has shed some new light on it. Along with providing new key art for the series (pictured above), the streamer has revealed that Making a Murderer Part 2 will release on October 19, and will detail the lives of the accused. Here is what you need to know.
Picking up where the first season left off, Making a Murderer Part 2 is set to build on the events depicted therein, with Season 2 shifting towards chronicling the experience of the two men convicted and imprisoned for the murder of Teresa Halbach -- Steven Avery and his nephew, Brendan Dassey. Each man is serving a life sentence for Teresa Halbach's murder, a crime they both maintain they are innocent of committing.
Following the headline-making nature of Making a Murderer's first season, there have been developments in both Steven Avery and Brandon Dassey's post-conviction cases. High-powered attorney Kathleen Zellner has come aboard as Avery's attorney, and Making a Murderer Part 2 will chronicle her efforts.
Making a Murderer assures that viewers will be able to watch as Kathleen Zellner -- who, according to the press release, has "righted more wrongful convictions than any private attorney in America," -- delves into how and why a jury convicted Steven Avery of Teresa Halbach's murder. The series also previews that Season 2 will follow Zellner as she uncovers "unexpected evidence" relating to what could have happened to Halbach. As was the case in the initial season, Avery's is not the only case Making a Murderer Part 2 will chronicle.
Part 2 will also follow the post-conviction case of Steven Avery's nephew, Brendan Dassey, with his attorneys focusing on proving Dassey's murder confession was made involuntarily. It is a fight that has the potential of reaching the U.S. Supreme Court. A federal magistrate judge overturned Dassey's conviction in 2016, though after a vote in the federal appeals court in late 2017, four judges ruled against Dassey (and three for him), and that initial ruling was overturned.
While the controversial docuseries made headlines upon its release on Netflix during the final weeks of 2015, Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey's cases have remained somewhat out of the spotlight during the past three years, with the occasional exception occurring here and there due to court proceedings. The second installment of Making a Murderer is bound to cause a resurgence of interest in both convictions. Due to it being a docuseries, we know that, to date, neither man has been released since the original season bowed.
Like its previous installment, Part 2 will arrive towards the end of the year, except with a lot more time left in the hourglass than Part 1 made possible. The Season 2 debut of Making a Murderer will go down on October 19 on Netflix. While you wait for it to debut, television fans have a myriad of new content options to watch on the streaming giant and other platforms this fall.
