Chad Powers should not work this well.
The entire series is built around a premise that sounds better suited to a five-minute sketch than a television show: disgraced quarterback Russ Holliday puts on a prosthetic disguise, invents an eccentric alter ego named Chad Powers and somehow fools an entire college football program into believing he’s someone else.
Yet by the time Chad Powers reaches Season 2, the disguise is almost beside the point.
Glen Powell returns as Russ and Chad in a second season that’s funnier, stranger and considerably more emotionally invested in the consequences of Russ’s deception. What began as an elaborate football comedy has evolved into a surprisingly effective story about identity, redemption and what happens when the fake version of yourself starts becoming more successful — and perhaps more likable — than the real one.
The result is a six-episode second season that takes a premise already stretched beyond its logical limits and somehow finds another gear.
Chad Powers Season 2 Makes The Lie Much Harder To Maintain
Season 2 picks up shortly after the events of the first season, with Chad no longer simply an anonymous walk-on trying to earn a spot with the South Georgia Catfish. He’s becoming a legitimate football star.
That’s great news for the Catfish and terrible news for Russ.
The more attention Chad receives, the harder it becomes to maintain an identity that was never designed to withstand serious scrutiny. Russ isn’t merely putting on prosthetics and changing his voice anymore. He has relationships to maintain, expectations to meet and an increasingly complicated network of lies protecting the person everyone believes Chad Powers to be.
Ricky, played by Perry Mattfeld, now knows the truth, fundamentally changing her relationship with both Russ and Chad. Rather than simply exposing him, she becomes part of the effort to keep the deception alive — partly because she understands what the Catfish’s success means to her father, Coach Jake Hudson.
That gives Season 2 a different kind of tension. The question isn’t simply whether someone will discover Russ’s secret. It’s how many people will become entangled in protecting it before everything inevitably collapses.
Glen Powell Makes Russ And Chad Feel Like Different People
Glen Powell remains the reason Chad Powers can survive its own absurdity.
The prosthetics are intentionally ridiculous, the voice is ridiculous and Chad’s entire existence requires everyone around him to overlook things that would immediately expose Russ in real life.
Powell commits so completely that eventually none of that matters.
More importantly, Season 2 lets him explore the growing divide between Russ Holliday and Chad Powers. Chad began as a costume Russ needed to get back onto a football field. Now he’s becoming an identity Russ can hide inside.
People like Chad.
They root for him. They trust him. His teammates believe in him. He gets opportunities Russ destroyed years earlier through his own arrogance and selfishness.
That creates the season’s most interesting tension. Russ wants the redemption Chad is earning, but he can’t fully claim it without destroying Chad.
Powell finds comedy in that contradiction without losing the sadness underneath it. Russ can be selfish, manipulative and incredibly frustrating, but Season 2 makes it easier to understand why letting go of Chad might feel like losing the best version of himself.
Ricky Becomes Much More Important In Season 2
Perry Mattfeld also benefits considerably from the new status quo.
Ricky knowing Russ’s secret gives her far more agency than simply being another person he has to fool. She can challenge him directly, recognize when his lies are getting out of control and understand exactly how much damage he’s capable of causing.
The relationship between Ricky and Russ also becomes increasingly complicated because she has experienced both versions of him.
She knows the arrogant former quarterback underneath the prosthetics, but she has also watched Chad become someone capable of helping her father and bringing hope back to the Catfish program.
That makes Ricky one of the few people capable of asking the question at the heart of the series: if Russ becomes a better person while pretending to be somebody else, does that growth still count?
The Catfish Finally Feel Like More Than Background Players
Season 2 also does a better job expanding the world beyond Russ’s increasingly precarious double life.
Steve Zahn continues to give Coach Jake Hudson an enormous amount of heart, grounding a series that could otherwise float away on its own silliness. The Catfish aren’t merely useful pieces in Russ’s redemption story anymore. Their success matters because it matters to Hudson and to the people surrounding the program.
Colton Ryan’s Gerry also becomes considerably more important as the threat to Chad’s identity grows. His obsession with what’s happening around the team pushes portions of Season 2 away from straightforward sports comedy and toward something unexpectedly suspenseful.
That’s one of the season’s biggest surprises.
Chad Powers can move from broad physical comedy to football drama to romance and then suddenly play like a thriller about a man whose elaborate false identity is beginning to collapse.
Somehow, those pieces mostly fit together.
Season 2 Gets Weirder — And That’s A Good Thing
The smartest decision Chad Powers makes is refusing to become a conventional inspirational sports comedy.
There are certainly pieces of one here. The Catfish are underdogs, Russ is chasing redemption and football provides plenty of opportunities for emotional victories and crushing setbacks.
But the series keeps undercutting that familiarity with something stranger.
Russ isn’t Ted Lasso. He’s the person responsible for most of his own problems. Chad isn’t simply his second chance. He’s an increasingly elaborate lie that has begun affecting people Russ actually cares about.
That allows the comedy to become darker as the season progresses.
The better things go for Chad, the more dangerous the situation becomes for Russ. Every victory creates another reason the disguise has to survive. Every new relationship creates another person who can be hurt when the truth eventually comes out.
Season 2 understands that contradiction and keeps tightening it.
The New Characters Add Even More Pressure
The expanding world brings several new characters into Russ’s orbit, including Colin Woodell as wealthy booster Jay and Gillian Jacobs as Jerri Dougan, Gerry’s sister.
Jerri is particularly well suited to the show’s increasingly paranoid energy. Gerry’s fixation on Chad doesn’t exist in isolation anymore, and the growing suspicion surrounding the quarterback adds another threat to an identity that’s becoming almost impossible to protect.
The new additions don’t steal focus from the core ensemble, but they help make Chad’s growing fame feel consequential. Russ isn’t hiding inside a struggling football program nobody notices anymore.
There are more eyes on Chad Powers now.
And that’s exactly what Russ doesn’t need.
Is Chad Powers Season 2 Worth Watching?
Absolutely.
If Season 1 proved that the Eli Manning sketch could somehow support an actual television series, Season 2 proves Chad Powers can become something considerably more interesting than its original gimmick.
The football remains fun and the disguise remains ridiculous, but the series has discovered that the real story isn’t whether Russ can keep fooling everyone.
It’s what pretending to be Chad is doing to Russ.
Glen Powell continues to throw himself completely into both sides of the character, Perry Mattfeld gives Ricky more emotional weight, Steve Zahn remains the show’s beating heart and the increasingly unstable situation surrounding Gerry gives the season an unexpected edge.
There are moments when the escalating deception requires an enormous suspension of disbelief. At this point, accepting that nobody immediately recognizes a once-famous former quarterback beneath some prosthetics is simply the price of admission.
But Chad Powers knows that.
Instead of wasting energy trying to make the disguise believable, Season 2 asks a much more interesting question: what happens when the person underneath it starts believing in Chad too?
That’s where this ridiculous little football comedy becomes surprisingly good television.
Season 2 turns an already ridiculous disguise into a surprisingly thoughtful story about identity and redemption, with Glen Powell finding even more depth beneath Chad’s prosthetics.
Where To Watch Chad Powers Season 2
All six episodes of Chad Powers Season 2 are streaming now on Hulu. Unlike Season 1’s weekly rollout, the complete second season was released at once on September 3.
Yes. Season 2 improves on the first season by developing Russ and Chad’s increasingly complicated identities while giving the supporting cast more to do. Seat42F rates the season 8.7 out of 10.
Chad Powers Season 2 consists of six episodes, bringing the Hulu series to 12 episodes across its first two seasons.
Glen Powell stars as Russ Holliday and his alter ego Chad Powers, alongside Perry Mattfeld, Quentin Plair, Wynn Everett, Frankie Rodriguez and Steve Zahn.
Yes. All six episodes of Chad Powers Season 2 were released together on Hulu on September 3, 2026.
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Thomas Miller is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Seat42F, covering television, movies and streaming entertainment. He launched Seat42F in 2007 and has spent nearly two decades covering the entertainment industry.
