Spoilers ahead for the Season 2 premiere of Murder in a Small Town on Fox, called "Acts of Murder" and available streaming next day with a Hulu subscription.
The small town of Gibsons and its penchant for housing murderers is back in the 2025 TV schedule, with Karl Alberg (Rossif Sutherland) and Cassandra Lee (Kristin Kreuk) already running into brand new challenges for Season 2. Fortunately, their romance seems to be going strong, but Mayor Holman (Marcia Gay Harden) is clearly going to be a complication. The premiere already addressed my issue with Cassandra from Season 1, when she always seemed to be part of Alberg's storylines instead of getting her own. She has a new role to play in Season 2, and Kreuk opened up to CinemaBlend about what she gets to do this fall.
After Season 1 ended on the tease of Cassandra getting into local politics, Season 2 wasted no time in kicking off that plot for her. She was elected to the final vacant council seat in Gibsons, and was quickly bombarded with requests. The first ask she faced from a constituent was pretty funny, with a local man approaching her with a complaint about his neighbor's rooster, but the job became more serious when the mayor confronted her about her campaign pledge to devote funds to an art center.
The art center isn't one of Mayor Holman's priorities, and it's pretty clear that she's going to get in Cassandra's way this season. In fact, she already has started trying to interfere, by asking Alberg to talk Cassandra out of her art center and offering him the chance to hire more officers if he does. While she's seemingly not one of the murderers that Alberg encounters regularly, she could be an interesting nemesis for Cassandra, and I think Cassandra (and Kristin Kreuk) deserve a worthy nemesis this season.
My only issue with the character last season was that Murder in a Small Town couldn't always fold her into the main stories as a love interest and/or librarian, to the point that Kristin Kreuk didn't always feel like Rossif Sutherland's co-lead. Executive producer Jeff Wachtel acknowledged the problem back in the spring, but also promised that the problem would be addressed in Season 2. Kreuk opened up about Cassandra getting more to do as part of the main plot this season, telling me:
That is what we talk about with Cassandra all the time, and that's where this show is different from most procedural shows where your other romantic lead is not involved in the crimes at all. We really grappled with how to do that. I have a fun murder mystery of my own this season that I go on with Karl's daughter.
Alberg and Cassandra quickly moved past the will-they/won't-they stage of their relationship in Season 1, so they're more than their romance. Now, she'll get to do more on screen, and I'm intrigued by Kreuk's tease of a murder mystery with Alberg's daughter. There was some awkwardness last season before they really got to know each other, after all, and now Cassandra is a council member. The former Smallville actress went on:
I loved that we were able to find a storyline, or they were able to find a storyline, wherein Cassandra could be really pushed to the limit, in this what could be maybe a more boring local political storyline. But when you bring in Marcia Gay Harden, and we have that kind of force of personality, it really is a dynamic story that will capture your interest even while they're trying to solve murders, which seems much more pressing.
Murder in a Small Town is Marcia Gay Harden's first series regular role since CBS cancelled So Help Me Todd in 2024, and her character seems poised to cause plenty of trouble in Season 2. I'm just hoping that she doesn't come between Alberg and Cassandra, but it's too early in the season to say for sure.
What we can say for sure is that Murder in a Small Town pulled out the stops for guest stars in Season 2. The lineup includes Law & Order's Camryn Manheim, Teen Wolf's Tyler Posey, The X-Files' William B. Davis, Lovecraft Country's Jamie Chung, The Vampire Diaries' Sara Canning, and the late Malcolm-Jamal Warner in his final performance prior to his death. Noah Reid will also return as Season 1 serial killer Tommy Cummins.
See what Murder in a Small Town has in store for Cassandra and Alberg this season with new episodes on Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET on Fox, ahead of new episodes of Doc Season 2 at 9 p.m. ET.
