'The Politician' Season 1 Ending Sets Up An Even More High-Stakes Season 2

Spoilers ahead for The Politician Season 1. After mounting perhaps the most cutthroat high school election campaign in history — and then abandoning politics altogether after it fell apart — Payton Hobart (Ben Platt) will have a new race to navigate when The Politician Season 2 premieres. In the Season 1 ending, the show jumps ahead four years to find an aimless, unmotivated Payton studying at NYU. He's rooming with James (Theo Germaine); Skye (Rahne Jones) is at Vassar; Alice (Julia Schlaepfer) is engaged; Astrid (Lucy Boynton) is working as a waitress; and Infinity (Zooey Deutch) wrote a memoir and is now living off of her earnings. McAfee (Laura Dreyfuss) is the only one still working in politic: she's just become a campaign staffer for Dede Standish, a senator who, McAfee soon find out, isn't even campaigning because she's run unopposed for the last three election cycles.

Infuriated by her complacency, McAfee seeks out James and, together with the rest of their former Saint Sebastian classmates, they convince Payton to run against Standish for senate. The plan? To position him as a young, hungry, "once in a generation" candidate — and to exploit the fact that Standish is in a secret throuple with her husband (Joe Morton) and their lover William (Teddy Sears).

This perfectly set ups The Politician's second season, which was the plan from the beginning. When Netflix picked up the show in 2018, they green-lit two seasons, each set to follow a different political race that Payton is involved in. A premiere date has yet to be announced, but there are some guesses to be made about the cast and basic plot details. It will likely be set in New York City, which may mean less of Gwyneth Paltrow (Payton's mom Georgina) and Jessica Lange (Infinity's grandmother), whose characters are still back in California. However, it will likely mean more of Judith Light (Standish) and Bette Medler (Standish's campaign manager Hadassah Gold), as well as Sam Jaeger, who plays a Texas Senator-Elect with White House ambitions of his own.

Netflix doesn't always stick to a strict schedule, but look for The Politician Season 2 sometime in 2020, possibly in September again. That is, unless Murphy's many other projects for the streaming service take precedence. Among the titles he's currently working on as part of five-year Netflix deal are Ratched, a series about the infamous Nurse Ratched from Once Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest starring Sarah Paulson in the villainous title role, and Hollywood starring Patti Lupone and Holland Taylor.

Murphy is also adapting three Broadway shows into films: Mart Crowley's play The Boys in the Band, as well as the musical The Prom and a ten part mini-series adaptation of the Pulitzer prize-winning musical A Chorus Line.

"I'm so booked," Murphy told Time. "When am I going to do it? I don't know. I'm only into April of next year's calendar." That's actually kind of promising with regards to The Politician. If Murphy is only booked with these projects up until spring 2020, and Season 2 is already accounted for, it should be coming by the end of the year at latest, and with an even more intense race in tow.

Standish may think Payton doesn't stand a chance against her, but she no idea who she's dealing with. If he and his classmates would do anything to win a high school election, imagine what they'll do with the stakes raised.