This Changes Everything For 'TGE' Season 2

Starz's The Girlfriend Experience Season 1 ran for 13 episodes, 25 minutes a piece, each building on the impending likelihood of a final, catastrophic Murphy's law blowout (anything that can go wrong, will go wrong). For those who have seen the whole season, you can attest that the end result doesn't bring that satisfaction. Partly because, that satisfaction is dependent on what you — or we, as a culture — think is wrong. In another surprising plot twist for Starz, The Girlfriend Experience Season 2 won't re-introduce the storylines or characters that proposed these types of questions in Season 1. But, that doesn't mean the creators are done prodding.

Where Season 1 followed Christine Reade, a second-year law student in Chicago, Season 2 will raise — or maybe I should say double — the bar. According to TVLine, on Thursday, Starz announced that Season 2 will feature two independent, but contemporaneous plot lines. The separate stories will occur over 14 episodes in both Washington, D.C. and New Mexico, and of course, feature different leads. That means no more of Riley Keough's apathetic Christine, a character that was both hard to like and understand (but because of these things, wholly refreshing to witness).

Each will be written by one of The Girlfriend Experience's creators, who both directed the majority of Season 1's episodes. (And again, it'll be produced by the original 2009 film's director, Steven Soderbergh.)

Money, power, sex, and how these three ideas conflict and conflate with each other, made up the basic ethos of Season 1. Technically speaking, the series was built on the premise of exchange. In this case, that exchange is money for sex, power for a different type of power. The idiosyncrasies of Christine's call girl experiences will not be re-opened, but that doesn't mean Season 2 can't expand on the types of problems and issues her experiences presented. The intersection of authority, privilege, ownership over one's own body and sexuality; social status; and economic status are all themes that Season 1 tapped into, but never fully indulged itself in. Thus giving Season 2 ample room to dig a little deeper.

Lodge Kerrigan will tackle Season 2's Washington, D.C. storyline, which takes place during 2018's mid-term elections. Anna Friel will star as Erica Myles, a finance director of a Republic Political Action Committee, who gets caught up in an affair with a call girl (Louisa Krause). The second storyline, led by Amy Seimetz, follows call girl Bria Jones (Carmen Ejogo). After finding herself in a dangerous position with a client, Bria flees to New Mexico, but has trouble escaping the perils of her profession.

“It was always our intention to change the universe every season,” Soderbergh said in a statement to TVLine. "But Amy and Lodge have cranked up the ambition, scope, and complexity of the show by creating two storylines even more provocative and confrontational than last year’s."

The Girlfriend Experience Season 2 doesn't have a premiere date yet. There's also no word on how the season will handle the two storylines, but knowing the show's style (which does whatever it pleases with lapses in time and the exclusion of details), things will move quickly, loose ends will not be tied, and by the end, no part of the experience will be particularly easy to stomach.