With a shocking season finale, what is on the horizon for the recently announced second season of Apple TV’s hit show Presumed Innocent?
This June, Apple TV released their limited series adaptation of Presumed Innocent based on the 1987 novel of the same name by Scott Turow. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Ruth Negga, and Peter Sarsgaard, the series drops us into the life of Rusty Sabich (Gyllenhaal), a prosecutor working for the District Attorney’s Office in Chicago, just as his colleague Carolyn Polhemus (Renate Reinsve) is brutally murdered.
It only gets worse when it’s revealed that Rusty and Carolyn were having an affair that resulted in her becoming pregnant, even spending time together on the night of her death.
What’s interesting about Presumed Innocent is that it was also a hit legal thriller starring Harrison Ford in the 1990s, and the limited series is considerably different from the film.
Where the film was fast-paced and a bit sensationalized, the series takes its time digging deep into how Rusty’s actions have impacted everyone around him: his wife, his children, and even his best friend and the former DA of Chicago, Ray Horgan (Bill Camp), who agrees to serve as the defense for Rusty’s inevitable murder trial.
In the limited series, there’s a much deeper look into what it takes to build a defense case and what it means for a jury to believe in a person’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
It’s also deeply impactful to watch a family question whether their husband and father are truly innocent.
And now that the first season has concluded and Apple TV has announced plans for Season Two, it’s worth looking back on how the limited series has diverged from what is seen in the film or read in the book and asking what this it might mean for future seasons.
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One of the biggest diversions from the source material is the creation of a character named Liam Reynolds, a man who murdered a sex worker named Bunny Davis and bound her in the same position that Carolyn Polhemus was found in upon her death.
Rusty and Carolyn were the prosecutors on this case just a few months before Carolyn’s death, and it was revealed in Season 1 that Carolyn buried evidence regarding a second sperm sample found inside the deceased sex worker aside from the one belonging to Liam Reynolds.
For much of the season, it was Rusty’s belief that the man who the second sample belonged to, a man named Brian Ratzer, held the key to his innocence. However, if you’ve seen the season finale, you know that’s not the case.
The killer is a shocking reveal that departs from both of the original narratives, but if you haven’t seen it, it’s not as far removed as you might think.
While it’s been revealed who was really responsible for the death of Carolyn Polhemus, it is possible that what really happened to Bunny Davis will be at the core of what’s investigated in Season Two, as it is one of the few unanswered threads left after the finale.
Presumed Innocent
However, there are other mysteries that remain unsolved, and other aspects of the source material that have not been addressed could also serve as potential engines for Season 2.
In the film and the novel, Rusty isn’t the only person in the DA’s Office with whom Carolyn Polhemus has an affair. She also slept with Ray Horgan and Judge Lyttle, the judge assigned to Rusty’s case.
Carolyn was even acting as a courier for Lyttle while he (Lyttle is a man in the source material and subsequent film) took bribes.
It seems unlikely for additional affairs to have happened with Horgan and Lyttle in the limited series adaptation, but could there be someone else? We never did get answers as to why Carolyn buried evidence in the Liam Reynolds case. Was it just to guarantee a victory? Or is there more to this?
We also never learned the truth about why Carolyn Polhemus reported Tommy Molto (Sarsgaard) to HR. Peter Sarsgaard gave a captivating performance as the mercurial Tommy Molto, and undoubtedly, fans of the show would be happy to see more.
Will he unravel now that he’s lost such a highly publicized case? Will this drive him to murder? What does the future look like for both him and Chicago District Attorney Nico “Delay” Della Guardia (O-T Fagbenle)?
What we can be sure of, despite the fact that Scott Turow, author of Presumed Innocent, wrote a follow-up novel about Rusty and Barbara set twenty years later called Innocent, is that Rusty and his family won’t be at the center of Season Two.
Does this mean an anthology? Another adaptation of a different Turow novel (he has eleven others to choose from)? Or that we’ll still be following the same cast of characters in the Chicago DA’s office as they work a different case?
Time will tell. But with the same writers and producers at the helm, we can count on another incisive legal narrative and investigation into human nature centered around a harrowing crime.
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Toward the end of the series, it seemed a challenge to wrap everything up while changing the murderer and fleshing out Carolyn’s past with both corruption and several inter-office affairs.
By the season finale, so many questions remained.
Did Liam Reynolds really kill Bunny Davis? What was Carolyn’s motive to bury evidence about Brian Ratzer? Why was Tommy Molto reported to HR? With Ray Horgan’s heart attack will Rusty be left to defend himself?
And most pressingly, if left to his own devices, could Rusty maintain a level head?
The final episode aired on Wednesday, July 24th.
What's your verdict?
