‘The Girls on the Bus’: Melissa Benoist, Carla Gugino & More Stars Reveal Season 2 Hopes

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Girls on the Bus Season 1 Finale, “Isaac’s Wedding.”]

The Girls on the Bus has come to its Season 1 end, and with it came plenty of fuel for a second season. While there’s not currently an order for another chapter, the stars opened up to us about their hopes for a Season 2 and whether or not they think there’s more story to tell.

As viewers will recall, Hayden Wells Garrett (Scott Foley) was exposed as a planted nominee fronting the agenda of a crooked billionaire. And after acquiring damning evidence from a whistleblower, Sadie McCarthy (Melissa Benoist) was sought out by authorities, but with the help of her reporter cohorts, they were able to get away with their covert reporting and investigation, with plans to explore the story further following Garrett’s nomination as a primary candidate in the forthcoming presidential election.

“I think part of what makes Amy [Chozick]’s book Chasing Hillary so fascinating is the kind of push-pull between the press and the candidate in a general election and that kind of symbiotic relationship and what it looks like and what it feels like,” Benoist shares. “So my hope, if we were able to tell more of this story, would be to dig even deeper into that regard or into that aspect of being a campaign journalist and being in that close of proximity to the candidate.”

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Getting close to Garrett proved to be potentially dangerous, but if viewers learned anything about Sadie over the course of the series, it’s that she’s not so easily deterred. But who would guide her on the journey? While Sadie has her friends, it seems that a new spirit could be a helpful sounding board as her late editor Bruce Turner (Griffin Dunne) appeared to her following his death. Dunne is certainly open to a return in his ghostly role, “As somebody who really enjoyed being part of this series, I definitely see potential,” he tells TV Insider.

When it came to Foley’s more sinister side in the series, the actor says, “Any role I take on, I make sure whether I share it with the director or other cast members, the character always has a secret. It’s just more interesting for me,” he admits. “I think we are all capable of duality in personality,” he adds, regarding whether Garrett is a full-on bad guy or not.

Natasha Behnam, who plays TikToker Lola Rahaii, is hopeful the reporters at the center of this story could find a more satisfying conclusion in another season. “If we are able to see what these characters do after [Season 1’s ending], that’s what gets fascinating, is how do people who care so much about telling the truth and essentially changing the world, function in a system that is broken,” Behnam notes.

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Lola was appointed a new gig with a legitimate publication by the end of Season 1, and that wasn’t the only career change in store, as Kimberlyn Kendrick (Christina Elmore) set out on her own to pave a new path forward. “I love how the first season ends with everyone entering into new possibilities,” Elmore notes. As for where she envisions a second season heading, Elmore adds, “I think their own personal journeys with their families and their career and their choices and their friendships is just going to deepen. So that’s exciting to me.”

Speaking of family, legacy reporter Grace Gordon Greene (Carla Gugino) prepared to bring her daughter into the mix with the finale, leading us to wonder what widening the inner circle of the core group might look like. “We never know, obviously, if something is going to go further. So I do think the writers have done a really good job of taking us to a place where you see these characters in a very different place than where they started,” Gugino shares.  “And hopefully you’re invested in them enough that you’re actually curious what the beginning of this new phase is because it does seem that something about them all coming together in this particular [moment is kismet].”

Sadie’s on-again-off-again flame Malcolm, a.k.a. “Loafers” (Brandon Scott), was also welcomed into the investigative mix. Whether that flame can continue to burn or not will remain to be seen, but Scott says, “I think that they have this strong connection.”

Do you hope to see more of The Girls on the Bus? Sound off in the comments section, below, and stay tuned as we await word on the show’s potential return.

The Girls on the Bus, Streaming now, Max