Chad Powers season 2 is coming and I have so many thoughts

Okay, so I have to be honest with you. When I first heard the premise of Chad Powers — Glen Powell, beloved internet boyfriend, slaps on a fake mustache and pretends to be a different quarterback so he can keep playing college football — I thought, that is the dumbest thing I have ever heard.

And then I watched it and I was completely, embarrassingly hooked.

Now season 2 is happening, and I have thoughts. A lot of them. Because this show somehow snuck up on everyone and became genuinely one of the most fun things on TV, and I don’t think enough people are talking about why.

Why does a fake mustache premise actually work this well?

The disguise is so bad it’s perfect. Chad Powers — the character, not the show — wears a fake name, a fake mustache, and a personality that is essentially just Glen Powell turned up to eleven. The joke isn’t that the disguise is clever. The joke is that it works anyway, because people see what they want to see.

There’s something genuinely funny and a little sad about that. You can reinvent yourself completely and nobody notices because they weren’t paying that close attention to begin with.

Is Glen Powell carrying this entire show on his back?

Glen Powell is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, and he knows it, and he leans into it. The guy has charm to spare — we all knew that after Anyone But You made him the internet’s collective situationship — but what he does in Chad Powers is a little different. He’s playing someone who’s both the funniest person in the room and the most desperate, and he makes you root for that guy even when he absolutely should not be rooted for.

That’s a hard thing to pull off. Most actors pick one lane. Powell is doing both at the same time and making it look easy.

What actually makes Chad Powers different from every other sports comedy?

Most sports comedies are about the sport. Chad Powers is about the ego that lives inside the sport. Russ Holliday — the real guy under the mustache — didn’t lose his career because he wasn’t talented. He lost it because he was too much of himself, and then he tried to solve that by becoming someone else entirely.

That’s not a football story. That’s a very human story wearing a football jersey. And it’s way more interesting than another underdog-wins-the-big-game arc.

The show is based on a Saturday Night Live sketch that Eli Manning did, which is maybe the most 2020s sentence I’ve ever typed. And yet somehow that origin story produced something with actual heart in it.

What do we actually know about Chad Powers season 2?

Hulu renewed it, which — good. The first season ended with enough loose threads that a second season felt less like a gift and more like a requirement. Where does Chad go from here? Does the disguise hold? Does anyone actually figure it out, or does the world just keep accepting the mustache?

There’s no full release date confirmed yet as of mid-2025, but the renewal itself tells you Hulu knows what they’ve got. According to Deadline, the pickup came after strong viewership numbers that surprised pretty much everyone, including probably the people who made it.

Why is everyone sleeping on this show?

Coverage has been weirdly light for how good this show is. My theory is that the premise sounds like a bit — like something you’d describe to someone and they’d laugh and say “okay but I’m not watching that” — and then never give it a chance.

But that’s what makes the payoff so good. You show up expecting a sketch stretched too thin, and you get an actual story with actual stakes and a lead performance that’s doing real work.

I’ve been in a lot of conversations where someone goes “oh I haven’t watched that yet” and then three days later texts me that they binged it in one sitting. That’s the Chad Powers pipeline and it is very real.

Should you watch season 1 before season 2 drops?

Yes. Absolutely yes. Don’t let anyone tell you the mustache speaks for itself — you need the full context of season one to appreciate what’s actually going on with this character. It’s a short watch. You’re not committing to a prestige drama with seventeen seasons and a prequel series. Just do it.

And honestly, it’s a good time. In my last piece about shows that surprised me, I talked about how the best TV right now tends to be the stuff nobody’s yelling about on group chats — and Chad Powers is peak that energy.

Here’s the thing about Chad Powers. It shouldn’t be this good. The math doesn’t add up. SNL sketch plus Eli Manning plus fake mustache plus Hulu plus Glen Powell should equal a fun one-and-done novelty.

Instead it equals a show I genuinely cannot wait to see more of. And I don’t know what to tell you about that except that sometimes the dumbest premise in the room turns out to have the most to say.

But what do I know? I’m the person who got emotionally invested in a fake quarterback named Chad.

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