Beef Season 2 Review: Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan Reunite to Ignite a Fierce New Chapter

Alright, so Netflix has doubled down on Beef with a second season. If you caught the first one, you know it had that crackling tension between Ali Wong and Steven Yeun—two randos whose fender bender spiraled into a glorious, mutually assured life-ruining feud. It was tight, funny, and had teeth. Season 2 flips the whole concept upside down, and I’ll be honest: I wasn’t convinced they needed to go back for seconds, but here we are.

Meet the New Lineup: High-Drama at Country Club Heights

This time around, the show trades in petty road rage for the high-wire politics of a super fancy country club. Instead of strangers, we’ve got three wildly different couples, all with their own beefs, obsessions, and now, a heavy dose of class warfare. Picture a White Lotus–style satirical spring break, but for people who take golf memberships and reputation way too seriously.

• Josh Martín (Oscar Isaac) – The harried general manager, convinced he’s in with the billionaire set, but mostly holding on by his fingernails.
• Lindsay Crane-Martín (Carey Mulligan) – Josh’s wife, with her own dreams (specifically, bailing on all this for a cozy bed-and-breakfast).
• Ashley Miller and Austin Davis (Cailee Spaeny & Charles Melton) – Young, newly engaged, a little bit entitled, and both working the club’s bottom rung. They stumble into drama when they record one of Josh and Lindsay’s not-so-civilized spats, then agonize over what to do with the footage.
• Chairwoman Park (Youn Yuh-jung) & Dr. Kim (Song Kang-ho) – The club’s new ultra-rich owner and her cosmetic surgeon husband, bringing the story halfway around the globe (yep, a solid chunk is set in Seoul). Park, for her part, is fighting off a scandal of her own.

This Isn’t Your Average Workplace Drama

Here’s where it gets juicy. The show plays with that generation gap—think Elder Millennials vs. anxious Gen Z—cranking up the tensions between the older, world-weary couple (Isaac and Mulligan) and their younger, more idealistic counterparts (Spaeny and Melton). Everyone’s angling for power, money, and, naturally, a nod of approval from the always looming Chairwoman Park. It’s a snake pit, and nobody is innocent.

Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan are reunited here (they were together in Drive and Inside Llewyn Davis). They’re both uncorking some of their best, sharpest work. Watching these two emotionally implode is just as fun as watching them pretend everything is fine in public. Meanwhile, Spaeny and Melton are top-shelf as the generation coming for their piece—only to discover exactly how the sausage gets made in the upper crust.

The Series Expands (And Gets Weirder—In a Good Way)

Where the first season tore through the fallout between strangers, here, all the combustibles are crammed inside the same gilded cage. There’s a great little subplot involving a missing dachshund and another episode set almost entirely in an ER—these bits easily rank with the show’s all-time highlights. The country club backdrop adds a new flavor too, somewhere between biting comedy and gross-rich-people self-destruction.

And creator Lee Sung Jin keeps his Korean heritage front and center, especially with Park and Kim’s culture-clash marriage. There’s just a lot happening—money drama, generational bitterness, secret recordings, and more than a few moments where you’re left wondering, ‘Wait, are they actually going to do that?’ Spoiler: yes, yes they are.

Behind the Curtain: Who Pulled This Off?

Lee Sung Jin wrote the opener and then teamed up with a whole crew, including Anna Ouyang Moench, Gene Hong, Madeleine Pron, Ethan Kuperberg, Alex Russell, Carrie Kemper, and Niko Gutierrez-Kovner for the rest. The humor is even darker this round, but it keeps that slinky, unnerving balance of laughs and ‘yikes.’ The subject is still beef—like, actual conflicts—but it hits harder because there’s real money and jobs on the line now. Oh, and a few surprise celebrity cameos (I’m not ruining them; relax).

This season’s shorter (eight episodes instead of ten), but still feels packed—episodes run long, and the finale almost hits an hour. You get stylish title cards, a killer score, and a last episode that nearly gave me a gall bladder attack.

'By bringing together six of the best actors working today in a complex story that connects vastly different characters in a tale full of rage, hate, revenge, death, sex, and more, Lee Sung Jin has chronicled an unfiltered look at what can happen to anyone when they feel what they have is slipping away.'

Worth Your Time?

Look, this isn’t just a cash-grab extension—season two feels like its own animal. It’s still hilarious when it wants to be, but also way more sprawling and anxious. If the first season set the bar, this one vaults over it while juggling three glasses of chardonnay. And I’ll keep saying it: Isaac and Mulligan should probably be forced by law to act together once a decade.

Beef season two is streaming now on Netflix. If you want the sharpest dark comedy on TV this year, clear your schedule.