Phil Lord and Chris Miller want you to solve The Afterparty’s mysteries

If you’re ever struggling to decide what to watch, you could always let The Afterparty decide for you. Apple TV Plus’ comedy series, now in its second season, offers a new experience every time. Each episode is done in a different genre style — in the second season, you can expect a film noir, a Wes Anderson pastiche, and an ’80s erotic thriller, to name a few — but what each episode in a season has in common is the murder mystery that kicks off in the premiere.

In the show’s second season, the murder being solved is that of Edgar (Zach Woods), an eccentric crypto-millionaire poisoned on the day of his wedding to protagonist Zoë’s (Zoë Chao) sister Grace (Poppy Liu). Much like the first season, which was set at Zoë’s high school reunion, Afterparty season 2 is meant to be a murder mystery that you can solve, if you’re so inclined. And, if you’re not, it’s still fun as hell.

“The goal is to do a proper Fair Play mystery where, if you’re paying enough attention, the clues are there, and it can be solved,” says creator Christopher Miller — one half of the Lord Miller production team responsible for Across the Spider-VerseOther things include. “But if you are just a casual viewer who likes a fun murder mystery, or a fun comedy, you can just enjoy it as a character show. Or you can have conversations about whodunit without poring over each little detail.”

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According to Miller, the show’s cast and crew go above and beyond to make Afterparty the ultimate mystery comedy, appealing to casual viewers just looking for good jokes and genre parodies to Reddit super-sleuths “who really freeze-frame it,” hiding additional puzzles and clues in the set design “for the real obsessive nerds.”

With a show this layered, there’s a bit of a chicken-or-egg question: What comes first, the genres AfterpartyWill parody or its story find the characters in?

“Well, really, the murder comes first,” says co-showrunner Anthony King, “and then we from there [ask]: Who is responsible? Who else was in the situation? And as we’re building those out, as [characters]When you start telling their story, it feels like. You’re right, I suppose. This is what you should do:This is how their story will be told.”

This is why, King says, that when it’s time for Grace, the bride at the center of the story, to share how the night of the murder (her wedding!) went for her, it’s a Jane Austen story.

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“She’s getting married, and she’s in love with the idea of love, and it’s very whimsical,” says King. “And so it’s like, That sounds like something from Jane Austen. If we knew that we could put her in an antique dress or make her obsessed with it. This would give us a new connection to You can also read about other ways to get in touch with us. characters. It’s a real push-pull, but we want it to really feel organic, so we’re not just cramming genres onto characters for the fun of it.”

And threaded throughout each genre homage are clues — according to the creators, viewers intent on solving the mystery will have to see nine out of the 10 episodes in the season to have all they need to definitively solve the case. There are also plenty of jokes. Like, as producer Phil Lord notes, high-stakes Connect Four, which “is finally being depicted as the game of skill that it is.”

You’ll have to watch AfterpartyWhat does he mean by this?