The Lowdown season two opens with a missing prisoner and Lee Raybon’s estranged father

The Lowdown returned to FX and Hulu on October 14 with two episodes that give Ethan Hawke’s Lee Raybon a new case in Tulsa: a public defender’s former client appears to have vanished from prison. The season two opener also brings Lee’s estranged father, played by Tommy Lee Jones, to the city, adding a family conflict to the mystery.

Mekko Dean’s disappearance starts the new case

Betty Gilpin plays Ginger, the public defender who asks Lee to look into the apparent disappearance of her former client, Mekko Dean. Ginger believes two men are following her, and Lee confirms her suspicion, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Her request draws Lee toward people connected to the prison as he investigates what happened to Mekko.

The Hollywood Reporter says Lee identifies one of the men following Ginger as prison guard McMann by the end of the second episode. Lee seeks information from Chili, a recently fired guard, who drives him to McMann’s home. There, McMann kills Chili and Lee escapes. The report does not establish Mekko’s whereabouts at that point in the story.

Creator Sterlin Harjo told Variety that the premise began with a question about how someone could disappear from a prison that keeps a sign-in sheet. He cited Oklahoma and stories shared by Hawke’s cousin, a public defender, as influences. Harjo directed both opening episodes and wrote the premiere; Sneha Koorse wrote episode two, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Tommy Lee Jones brings Lee’s father to Tulsa

Harjo told Variety he thought of Jones for the role after writing the first episode, and that Jones joined after reading it. In the opener, Lee accepts a journalism award for the exposé at the centre of season one. The Hollywood Reporter describes him as a Tulsa ‘truthstorian’; at the ceremony, he takes a mushroom gummy, insults the attendees during his speech and is punched by another reporter.

The opener also complicates Lee’s relationship with Ginger: she kisses him to make the men following her think they are together, but he misreads the gesture and later visits her office. By the end of the first episode, one of those men comes to Ginger’s home and she shoots him through a window, off camera, according to The Hollywood Reporter.