What Happened at the End of Poker Face Season 1? Everything to Know Before Season 2
Before Poker Face returns for Season 2, let's take a look at where the show left Charlie Cale.
This May, Poker Face returns for its second season, giving the acclaimed Peacock mystery/comedy a whole new set of cases, and a whole new cast of supporting characters to surround Charlie Cale (Natasha Lyonne), the show's human lie detector and amateur detective.
Like many of the great detective stories which inspired it, creator Rian Johnson's Poker Face gives viewers a new mystery with every episode, but there's also an overarching plot with Charlie's fate hanging in the balance, and that plot got even juicier at the end of the first season. So, ahead of the show's return to Peacock on May 8, let's take a look back at how Poker Face left things, and what that means for Charlie going forward.
RELATED: Every Guest Star in Poker Face Season 2
Charlie Cale's biggest obstacle in Poker Face Season 1
Charlie begins Poker Face as a cocktail waitress at a Nevada casino, but things turn further South in her life when a friend and coworker turns up murdered. In her search for answers, Charlie discovers that the casino boss, Sterling Frost Jr. (Oscar winner Adrien Brody), has been scheming behind the back of his father, Sterling Frost Sr. (Ron Perlman). When Frost Jr. commits suicide rather than face the consequences of his actions, Frost Sr. sets Cliff (Benjamin Bratt), the casino's head of security, on Charlie's tail, with the directive to hunt her down and kill her.
So, Charlie beats a path out of town in her Plymouth Barracuda. While she has to constantly keep moving to avoid detection, Charlie does pass the time by getting involved with locals in each town she visits, and often solving a murder or other crime in each town she travels through. Along the way, she solves a murder mystery at a Texas BBQ joint (with guest star Lil Rey Howard), gets involved with a deadly death metal band (with guest star Chloë Sevigny), and even winds up stranded in the Colorado mountains for a while (with guest star Joseph Gordon-Levitt) — along with plenty of other deadly cases across the series' first season.
How Poker Face Season 1 ends
At the end of the penultimate episode of the show's first season, Charlie was stabbed and left for dead by a criminal whose crimes she'd uncovered. After two months in the hospital, she's released, only to encounter Cliff, who takes her to Atlantic City for a meeting with Frost Sr. The casino boss reveals that he no longer blames Charlie for his son's death, because he's since learned that Frost Jr. was conspiring against him with his rival, East Coast casino owner and mob boss Beatrix Hasp (Rhea Perlman). Frost Sr. wants Charlie to help him make a deal with Hasp, using her lie detector gift as insurance, but before the meeting can happen, the lights go out, and Frost Sr. is shot dead with a gun Charlie was previously holding.
Cliff, who was working with Hasp all along, seems to have successfully framed Charlie for Frost Sr.'s murder, but before she can be arrested, she escapes long enough to send her FBI Agent friend Luca Clark (Simon Helberg) recordings of Frost Jr. ordering Cliff to kill her friend, Natalie (Dascha Polanco). Cliff is arrested and agrees to testify against Hasp, thus clearing Charlie's name and ending her troubles with the Frost family.
RELATED: Rian Johnson Reveals Poker Face Season 2 Details at PaleyFest
But that's not the end of Charlie's troubles. After turning down Luca's offer to come work at the FBI, Charlie receives a call from Hasp herself, who reveals that Charlie's interference in the Frost deal has started a mob war and thrown Hasp's entire business into disarray. Hasp offers an ultimatum: Charlie can work for her, therefore becoming a professional criminal, or she can face Hasp's assassins. Charlie refuses to work for Hasp and hits the road again, knowing full well that she'll once again have trained killers on her tail.
Season 1 ends with Charlie driving off into the horizon, with more adventures to come this year.
How can you watch Season 2 of Poker Face?
What happens to Charlie next? We'll find out when Poker Face returns May 8 with a three-episode premiere. After that, new episodes will debut weekly, all streaming exclusively on Peacock.
