Amazon announced the Season 2 renewal of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan back in April. The Season 2 renewal announcement came four months before Season 1 of the TV series adaptation of Clancy’s Ryanverse novels premiered on Amazon Prime Video.
The early renewal announcement reassured fans that they would see more of their favorite titular character after Season 1 ended. It also underscored Amazon’s confidence in the future of the new TV series.
The most compelling reason for Amazon to bring back Jack Ryan for Season 2 was that the gripping Season 1 storyline, intriguing plot twists and exciting action won audience approval.
The series also received favorable critical reviews, earning a 74 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 78 reviews, and a “generally favorable” Metascore of 66/100 based on 28 critics on Metacritic.
The trailer for Jack Ryan Season 1 was well received. With more than 16.5 million views on YouTube alone, Amazon had no reason to doubt that fans were excited about the series and wanted to see more of it. And the streaming service was happy to approve a second season for the series at a time that it was looking to boost its original content.
“With so much early anticipation for Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan from our customers and personally having the pleasure to preview the exhilarating, action-packed first season, we are excited to greenlight a second season of the series months ahead of its debut,” Amazon executive Jennifer Salke said.
“We’re thrilled that the first season has generated so much enthusiasm,” showrunner Carlton Cuse said. “We couldn’t be happier to be working with Amazon and to be filming very near the Amazon to tell the next great Jack Ryan adventure.”
And ahead of the return of Jack Ryan for Season 2, we bring you everything you need to know about Amazon’s latest hit, including release date, trailers, cast and what the showrunners have in store for fans in the upcoming season.
Jack Ryan Season 2 release date
There is no official word yet from Amazon about the release date for Jack Ryan Season 2.
Production of Jack Ryan Season 2 stared in the summer of 2018 before Season 1 premiered on August 31. Going by the production and marketing schedule for Season 1 which began filming in the spring of 2017 and premiered in the summer of 2018, we should expect Jack Ryan Season 2 to premiere sometime in the fall of 2019, rather than in the summer.
However, fans are hoping for a shorter production-marketing cycle this time around, and looking forward with hope that the new eight-episode Season 2 of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan will premiere next summer after filming took place in Europe and the U.K., South America, and the U.S.
Jack Ryan Season 2 details
Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan is an action thriller web TV series based on characters from Clancy’s fictional Ryanverse book series. The TV series, which premiered on Amazon Prime Video on August 31, 2018, after Amazon purchased the rights to the series on 2015, was created by Carlton Cuse (Lost, Bates Motel) and Graham Roland (Prison Break, Fringe).
Amazon announced the renewal of the series for Season 2 on April 24, 2018, before the Season 1 premiered on August 31, 2018.
Like Season 1, Jack Ryan Season 2 will also have eight episodes. The action thriller web TV series went into production in the summer of 2018, with filming taking place South America, Europe, Asia and North America.
Although shooting took place on four continents, Jack Ryan Season 2 is set in South America.
Filming for Jack Ryan Season 2 took place in London in October 2018 at Leicester Square, suggesting that some of the Season 2 action will take place in the city of London.
Jack Ryan Season 2 was already in production when Season 1 was released on Amazon Prime worldwide on August 31, 2018. Cuse told The Hollywood Reporter in a September 2018 interview that Jack Ryan Season 2 was already two months in production in September 2018, meaning that production began in July 2018.
Roland said the writers began working on Season 2 in October 2017.
“I think we opened up the writers’ room for season two on October 4, 2017,” Roland said
The award-winning director Dennie Gordon is directing and executive producing three episodes of the upcoming Jack Ryan Season 2, according to Deadline. Her previous credits include Hell on Wheels (TV series 2011-2016), Power (TV series 2014- ), Bloodline (TV series 2015- 2017), Goliath (TV series 2016- ), and Legion (TV series 2017- ).
The lineup of directors for Jack Ryan Season 1 had included Carlton Cuse (episode 6), Patricia Riggen (episodes 3, 5, 7), Daniel Sackheim (episodes 2, 4, 8), and Morten Tyldum (episode 1).
Cuse also served as executive producer alongside Jack Kransinki, Michael Bay (Platinum Dunes), Brad Fuller, Andrew Form and Mace Neufield.
It is expected that co-creators Cuse and Roland will return to Jack Ryan Season 2 as showrunners and executive producers, alongside Andrew Form, Brad Fuller, Michael Bay (Platinum Dune), and John Krasinski, who also stars in the film.
Others expected to serve as executive producers include Lindsey Springer, Andrew Bernstein, Mace Neufeld, David Ellison (Skydance Productions), Vince Calandra, Dana Goldberg, and Marcy Ross.
The companies co-producing Jack Ryan Season 2 are Paramount Television, Skydance Media, Platinum Dunes and Amazon Studios.
Amazon first announced that Krasinki had been cast in the role of the titular character Jack Ryan on April 29, 2016, while Abbie Cornish’s casting as Ryan’s fiancée Cathy Mueller was first announced on November 3, 2016.
Amazon confirmed that Krasinki and Wendell Pierce would return for Season 2 in April 2018.
Krasinski stars in the series as the titular character. He is the first actor to portray Tom Clancy’s Ryanverse character on TV, and the fifth after Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck, and Chris Pine, portrayed the character in the movies.
In May 2018, multiple media reports confirmed that John Hoogenakker had been promoted to series regular for Season 2 after having appeared in a recurring role during Season 1.
Amazon confirmed during its San Diego Comic-Con panel that Noomi Rapace was joining the cast. Amazon also confirmed in August that Michael Kelly, Jovan Adepo, Jordi Molla, Cristina Umaña, and Francisco Denis, had joined the cast as regulars.
In September, Tom Wlaschiha was confirmed for a recurring role.
Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan TV series features the titular character during the early days of his career as a CIA analyst. The story takes place before the events of The Hunt for Red October, the first title of Tom Clancy’s Ryanverse series.
Going by Amazon’s Jack Ryan web TV series, Ryan had been a bad-ass CIA operator right from his early days before Clancy introduced him to us in The Hunt for Red October. In Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan Season 1, he fights a dangerous international terrorist Suleiman (Ali Suliman) and kills him in the Season 1 finale.
Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan Season 1 introduces fans to the titular character and follows his story as a CIA analyst who discovers a series of suspicious bank transfers by the Islamic terrorist Suleiman.
Jack Ryan Season 1 also shows how the character met his future wife Cathy Mueller (Abbie Cornish) and his future mentor and boss, the CIA veteran James Greer, played by Wendell Pierce.
Jack Ryan Season 2 trailer
Amazon has not yet released a trailer for Jack Ryan Season 2. It is likely that the first official trailer will be released in the spring or summer of 2019. We will update readers as soon as Amazon drops a trailer for Jack Ryan Season 2.
Meanwhile, enjoy the trailer for Jack Ryan Season 1.
Jack Ryan Season 2 cast
Amazon has confirmed the Season 2 return of series star John Krasinki as Jack Ryan and co-star Wendell Pierce as Ryan’s mentor and boss James Greer.
Krasinki returns to star as Jack Ryan after starring as Lee Abbott in the hit horror film A Quiet Place (2018), which he also directed.
“From day one we only had one actor on our casting board for this series – John Krasinski,” said Paramount executive Amy Powell. “We are so excited that he is our Jack Ryan and we get to make another season with this incredibly talented team.”
Krasinki played Jim Halpert in The Office (TV series 205-2013 and Jack Silva in 13 Hours (2016). Wendell Pierce played Detective Lee Tucker in Unsolved (TV series 2018), Reverend Hosea Williams in Selma (2014) and Bunk Moreland in The Wire (TV series 2002-2008).
Abbie Cornish, who plays Ryan’s girlfriend, Cathy Mueller, will also return for Jack Ryan Season 2.
John Hoogenakker, who played a recurring role in Jack Ryan Season 1, has been promoted to series regular for Season 2. So fans will see more of the Black Ops CIA operative in the upcoming season.
However, Ali Suliman will not return as Mousa Bin Suleiman since Ryan took out the terrorist in the season 1 finale before he could assassinate the President.
Dina Shihabi will also not return as Suleiman’s wife Hanin Ali.
New faces joining the cast of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan Season 2 include the Swedish actress Noomi Rapace. Amazon announced during the show’s San Diego Comic Con panel that Rapace had signed up for Jack Ryan Season 2 and was joining the cast as a series regular. Noomi will be playing the German Intelligence (BND) agent Harriet “Harry” Bauman, who encounters Ryan in South America.
Rapace is best-known for playing Lisbeth Salander in the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) and Elizabeth Shaw in Prometheus (2012).
Actor Michael Kelly has also joined the cast of Jack Ryan Season 2 as a series regular. According to Deadline, Kelly will portray the seasoned CIA field officer Mike November, who will work with Ryan in South America.
Kelly previously appeared in House of Cards (TV series 2013-2018) as Doug Stamper.
Jovan Adepo will play Marcus, a former special Navy crewman who accepts a role in a covert operation, while Jordi Molla will play Nicolas Reyes, the charismatic and powerful leader of a South American country. Cristina Umaña will play Gloria Bonalde, a courageous politician and mother.
Francisco Denis will play Ubarri, a top government official.
Fans know Jovan Adepo for playing Michael Murphy in The Leftovers (TV series 2014-2017), while Jordi Molla is best known for having played Dr. Salvador Ruiz in Genius (TV series 2017-).
Molla also appeared in Queen of the South (TV series 2016- ) as Roco de la Pena.
Franciso Denis played drug cartel leader Miguel Rodriguez Orejuela in Netflix’s Narcos (TV series 2015-2017). He also appeared as Brizuela in El Comandante (2017- ) and as Simon Rodriquez in El Libertardor (2013), alongside Edgar Ramirez.
Umana portrayed Judy Moncada in Narcos and appeared as Coqui in Cumbia Ninja (TV series 2013- ).
The East German-born actor Tom Wlaschiha will appear in the upcoming season in a recurring role.
The Game of Thrones star will play Max Schenkel, a foreign operative who encounters Ryan in South America. Fans will recall Wlaschiha as the Game of Thrones character who appeared in the recurring role of Jaqen H’ghar, the Faceless assassin who started sentences in which he was the subject with the phrase “A man,” instead of “I.”
Wlaschiha’s previous credits include Crossing Lines (TV series 2013-2015) in which he played Sebastian Berger with Donald Sutherland and William Fichtner.
Cuse recently confirmed in a recent interview with Digital spy that John Clark, another popular protagonist from Tom Clancy’s novels, will not be appearing in Amazon’s Jack Ryan series, although the character appeared in Clancy’s Ryanverse books and movies.
Clark won’t appear in Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan series due to rights issue arising from the portrayal of the character by Michel B Jordan in two upcoming films based on Clancy’s novels.
Roland explained that Hoogenakker’s character Matice will be filling in for Clark.
Jack Ryan Season 2 plot
Jack Ryan Season 1 followed the titular CIA analyst in the early days of his career.
In Jack Ryan Season 2, he is matched against powerful political forces in a troubled democracy in South America.
Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan Season 2 thus shifts the Season 1 focus on Europe and the Middle East to South America.
Cuse emphasized in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter that Season 2’s story will be self-contained like Season 1.
“We see each one of these seasons like a different book in the series,” he said.
“You should be able to watch it in the same way that you can go to an airport bookstore and grab a Tom Clancy Jack Ryan book and never have read the previous one, and still enjoy it,” Roland added.
“We’re taking these two characters of Jack Ryan and Jim Greer and putting them in a wholly different story — in this case, a political thriller in South America that’s kind of an allegory for the decline of democracy,” Cuse continued.
Fans will recall that in the Season 1 finale Greer was transferred to Moscow to serve as station chief and he invited Ryan to come along with him. Many fans interpreted that to mean Jack Ryan Season 2 will see the hero pitted against the Russians.
However, Cuse and Roland warned that although Greer is flying off to Moscow, Russia will not play a major role in Season 2 because the focus will be on political intrigue in a South American country.
This has led some fans to suggest that Jack Ryan Season 2 could be inspired by one of Clancy’s best-selling novels, Clear and Present Danger (1989), which has also been adapted into a film. In Clear and Present Danger, Ryan takes on South American drug cartels and works to expose corruption in high places.
Jack Ryan Season 2 story will show how Greer links up with Ryan from Moscow.
“Part of the fun of the story is unwinding out of the end of season one, when we know Greer is off to Russia,” Cuse said. “How do these two characters get back together? What are their relative roles, and how are they involved in this? There’s a little bit of carryover where you benefit from seeing season one, but really, you could watch season two and it will be its own narrative.”