Netflix’s ‘Murdaugh Murders’ Is Officially Returning for Season 2: Exclusive

It’s hard to imagine a true-crime tale with better timing than Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal. The three-part Netflix docuseries about Alex Murdaugh’s South Carolina crime saga premiered—and hit number one—as his double-homicide trial was in full swing. Within a week, Murdaugh was found guilty of murdering his wife, Maggie, and their son Paul at the family’s sprawling estate, and was sentenced to life in a South Carolina state prison.

More than six months later, Vanity Fair can exclusively reveal that a second season of Murdaugh Murders is coming with three new episodes set to premiere on September 20, 2023. Naturally, the news lands the very same week in which it was reported that Alex is set to plead guilty to nearly $8 million in federal fraud charges—and the same day Buster, Alex’s eldest son, breaks his silence on the case for a Fox Nation special. Suffice it to say, co-directors/co–executive producers Julia Willoughby Nason and Michael Gasparro had little difficulty making the case for season two.

“We always envisioned this as six episodes, and it was really just about getting Netflix on board. They saw that there were still stories to be told,” Gasparro tells VF. The only problem? Many of their desired interview subjects were trapped behind a witness stand, unable to speak with production, until now. “It was really just a waiting game.”

As Murdaugh’s case, which Gasparro calls the “trial of the century,” unfolded on Court TV, the filmmakers culled through six weeks of testimony and more than 100 witnesses. “We wanted to live in the first 24 to 48 hours of the crime,” says Willoughby Nason, which meant utilizing body camera footage and scenes from the interrogation room, as opposed to becoming a full-on courtroom drama. “We didn’t want to be doing any kind of recap,” she says, “we really wanted to live first-person with the people who experienced this.”

To say the community was deeply entrenched in this case goes without question, but it’s worth noting that one in 25 people in Colleton County received a jury summons for Murdaugh’s trial, which made for a singular jury selection process. “It wasn’t enough to say ‘I knew the Murdaughs’; it had to be ‘I went to prom with Alex Murdaugh,’” Wall Street Journal reporter Valerie Bauerlein, who is writing a book about the Murdaugh saga, says in season two, which features an interview with juror Gwen Generette.