Sterlin Harjo’s The Lowdown returns for season two October 14

Sterlin Harjo's The Lowdown returns October 14 with a two-episode premiere on FX and Hulu in the United States. The eight-episode second season brings another investigation, and new family complications, for Ethan Hawke's citizen journalist, Lee Raybon.

Harjo, a citizen of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma and a Mvskoke descendant, is the series' creator, writer, director and executive producer. The Reservation Dogs co-creator continues to build his television work around Oklahoma's people and places.

Hawke's character is a bookstore owner and self-described "truthstorian," determined to expose corruption in Tulsa even when it puts him in danger. The new season opens with Lee receiving a citizen journalism award before public defender Ginger, played by Betty Gilpin, draws him into a case involving a missing inmate and corruption among Tulsa's wealthy elite.

Tommy Lee Jones plays Lee's estranged father, Lee Raybon Senior, known as Frog. His arrival unsettles Lee's family life, particularly when Lee's daughter Francis, played by Ryan Kiera Armstrong, wants to get to know her grandfather.

Kaniehtiio Horn, a Mohawk actor from Kahnawà:ke, returns as Samantha, Lee's ex and Francis's mother. Keith David is also back as Marty, now managing editor of Heartland Press, and Rafael Casal returns as Johnny, Samantha's husband.

Behind the fictional investigations is Harjo's own experience documenting Tulsa's history. Lee is loosely inspired by his late friend and former colleague Lee Roy Chapman, a writer and historian Harjo met while working at This Land Press. For their video series Public Secrets, Harjo filmed Chapman travelling around Tulsa and recounting histories that were often overlooked. Chapman died in 2015.

"I saw that journalism and telling the truth and story could change a community," Harjo told TheWrap in June.

His partnership with Hawke carries forward a connection from Reservation Dogs, where Hawke had appeared. Harjo sent him the Lowdown script, ostensibly for notes. Hawke's one note was that he should play the part. Hawke is also an executive producer.

The first season was named one of the American Film Institute's 10 outstanding television programs of 2025, with AFI praising the series for "embracing the human poetry beneath the grit and decay of Tulsa, Oklahoma."

Harjo received a Peabody Trailblazer Award in 2025, "for expanding the possibilities of television storytelling while centering Indigenous voices with originality, humanity, and purpose."

In Canada, season two begins streaming on Disney+ on October 15, one day after the U.S. premiere.