The Adult Swim series
Common Side Effects
, which premiered in February 2025 as an unexpected hit featuring trippy animation and the voice of Hank Hill creator Mike Judge, has been renewed for a second season.
Co-creator Joe Bennett announced at New York Comic Con 2026 that
Common Side Effects
Season 2 will debut Sunday, Jan. 24 at 11:00 p.m. ET on Adult Swim and stream the following day on HBO Max.
The series was seen as a redemption of sorts for Bennett, whose previous project
Scavengers Reign
was canceled by HBO Max, offloaded to Netflix, then shelved again. He co-created
Common Side Effects
with Steve Hely (
Veep
).
Polygon watched the first episode of Season 2 ahead of the announcement and spoke with its creators about where the show is headed.
A new antagonist with hidden depth
The season introduces a character named Thomas, voiced by Bob Stephenson, who played Sam in
Scavengers Reign
. According to Hely, Thomas “came to the mushroom in his own way” and formed “a kind of religious obsession” with it.
“When he learns that other people have it and are using it, he becomes obsessed with stopping them,” Hely said. Bennett added: “We want to give him as much dimension as possible. You empathize with elements of Thomas. You kind of understand where he’s coming from.”
We always try to make sure there’s a way to see it from their point of view. We’ll get to that in the course of the season.
Steve Hely
The Blue Angel and shared hallucinations
Bennett said Season 2 explores how users of the “Blue Angel” mushroom can experience shared hallucinations, describing it as an ongoing thread that runs parallel with the story’s reality world.
“For Marshall, the deeper he’s getting, he’s unpacking a lot of stuff that he didn’t know was possible,” Bennett said. Hely added: “And maybe getting a little scared of it.” Bennett called it “a Pandora’s Box kind of a thing.”
Ambitious animation
Hely described Season 2 as “very ambitious,” with the show traveling to many different locations and featuring a higher shot count. He noted there is more in the Portal World, which is bigger scale overall.
“After season 1, we can now flex in these other areas and geek out on it,” Bennett said. “There’s more rough animation that we were able to do. There’s more stuff that we’re able to do in-house and take bigger swings on with these action scenes.”
The pharmaceutical industry
Bennett said the show continues its examination of both sides of the pharmaceutical business, as characters confront “the challenges of making something safe and getting it distributed.” Hely added that they begin to realize enemies “might have evolved that way for perfectly practical and sensible reasons,” calling it part of the show’s theme: “You might hate the current system, but setting up a different one is very challenging.”
Judge, who played pharmaceutical executive Rick in Season 1 and serves as an executive producer, remains heavily involved. Hely said he “reads everything.” Bennett added that Rick has “a pretty big role” in Season 2: “He’s actually one of my favorite characters in this season.”
Fans await news on Scavengers Reign
When asked whether
Scavengers Reign
would ever get a second season, Bennett replied: “TBD. There’s a huge fan base. But I don’t know. We’ll see.” Hely joked: “You’re gonna be in the nursing home, saying, ‘We’re working on it! One day!'”
Bennett also mentioned
Dealies
, his new animated show coming to Netflix. He described it as “very character-based” and set within the real world, playing with a big box store versus a struggling mom-and-pop antique store across the street.
When asked how many seasons of
Common Side Effects
he would like to make in total, Hely responded: “We want to tell 40 to 100 seasons. We see it as this constantly unfolding novel with many chapters that can expand in different directions and come back around.”
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