Apple TV has renewed Imperfect Women for a second season, taking a spinoff approach that will follow Kerry Washington’s character Eleanor rather than continuing the original ensemble story. Washington returns to star and executive produce through her Simpson Street banner alongside Pilar Savone.
Season 1, based on Araminta Hall’s novel, centered on best friends Eleanor and Mary (Elisabeth Moss) as they investigated the murder of the third member of their friend group, Nancy (Kate Mara), shown through flashbacks. Since there’s no second Imperfect Women book, Season 2 moves away from Hall’s source material entirely, built instead on an original story from series creator Annie Weisman, who returns as co-showrunner alongside Justin Hillian, known for his work on The Chi and Snowfall. The new season also relocates the story from Los Angeles to Martha’s Vineyard, with Eleanor returning to her hometown roots in the affluent Black enclave, only to find secrets and scandals threatening to unravel what she thought she knew about her past.
The choice to center the spinoff on Eleanor specifically, and to set her return in a historically significant Black community like Martha’s Vineyard, gives Washington’s character a setting and cultural specificity the original season’s Los Angeles backdrop didn’t carry. It also continues a pattern of Black actresses using strong ensemble performances in limited series to anchor expanded, character-driven spinoffs once a show finds an audience.
There are currently no plans for Moss’s Mary or Joel Kinnaman’s Robert, Nancy’s widower, to appear in the new season, though Leslie Odom Jr. and Sheryl Lee Ralph are expected to return as Eleanor’s brother and mother, with cast deals still being finalized. The season picks up after Eleanor’s flash-forward finale scene, which showed her stepping away from toxic relationship dynamics and starting a new chapter aboard a yacht with a new love interest. Moss and Lindsey McManus, who originally optioned Hall’s novel, continue as executive producers through Love & Squalor Pictures, alongside Hall herself. Imperfect Women is a co-production between 20th Television and Apple Studios.
With Eleanor now carrying the story on her own and Martha’s Vineyard replacing Los Angeles as the backdrop, the bigger question heading into Season 2 is how much of the original ensemble chemistry audiences responded to can survive the shift to a single-character spinoff.