If you missed Common Side Effects when it aired last year, it’s time to catch up with one of Adult Swim’s best and most offbeat shows in recent memory. Co-creators Joe Bennett (whose art style will be familiar to fans of the late, great Scavengers Reign) and Steve Hely made a trippy thriller about a man who discovers a mushroom that can cure any ailment (including death), and the ensuing fallout as multiple parties fight over how to use and control that miraculous power.
And soon, it’s coming back for a second season, which Bennett, Hely, and cast members Martha Kelly (DEA Agent Harrington) and Joseph Lee Anderson (DEA Agent Copano) teased at the Common Side Effects panel this week at San Diego Comic-Con. “Early 2027” is the newly announced release window, and the show was far enough along to share a couple of early glimpses with the audience.
First up, we saw Harrington and Copano’s first scene together in season two. In season one, the job partners (and besties) reluctantly parted ways. Harrington became determined to track down Marshall Cuso, the guy who discovered the “Blue Angel” mushroom, through law-enforcement channels; Copano struck out on his own, convinced that Marshall’s mushroom had become entangled in a much larger conspiracy.
At the very end of season one, Harrington figured out where Marshall and his partner-in-crime, Frances, were hiding out, and we saw her racing to find them. In this season two scene, we find out her version of what happened next.
It’s set in a diner, a few months after the season one finale. They’re not expecting to run into each other, but it’s a happy if guarded reunion. Harrington explains the DEA almost caught Marshall in Joshua Tree, but he got away, and she doesn’t offer details.
Copano, who was injured in a climactic season one shootout, has now fully recovered; he doesn’t realize Harrington snuck into the hospital and fed him a mushroom while he was in a coma. But he has an idea that “somebody gave me a mushroom.”
His near-death experience was a sobering one. He imagined his funeral (who knew he had two young kids?), and it’s made him more determined about what to do next. “I’m going to find Marshall and try to help him,” he tells his former partner. She says, “I’m going to do my job.” But they don’t part on bad terms; they interlace pinkies before leaving, and there is definitely hope of seeing them work as a team again.
The second scene shown at San Diego Comic-Con was the season two cold open, which picks up with Marshall and Frances right where we left them in the desert, wondering what they should do next. They agree they should learn everything they can about the mushroom and get scientists involved too.
But the optimistic moment is interrupted when Harrington zooms up on her motorcycle for the confrontation she described rather vaguely to Copano in their diner encounter. She draws her gun, and when Marshall asks how she found him, she says, “You’re driving an ice cream truck, dummy!”
We don’t really think Harrington is going to resort to violence, but she’s determined to take Marshall in. The mushroom may have healing properties, but several people have now died trying to get their hands on it, and she thinks she’s following the right path to restore order.
But what she doesn’t know is that Frances is sitting in the ice cream truck with Socrates—Marshall’s pet turtle—and is able to start the engine and back up at just the right angle to knock Harrington over. Marshall jumps in, and they speed off; we get a sweet “on the run” montage as they make their way north until reaching a “Welcome to Oregon” sign.
Speaking at the panel, Bennett explained he’s a big fan of the Coen Brothers and 1990s thrillers like The Fugitive, and Hely name-checked some other influences that Common Side Effects will draw upon in season two, including the Indiana Jones movies and National Treasure—and films like The Social Network and The Insider.
We can’t wait to see what happens next, and for more Socrates side-eye, when Common Side Effects season two returns to Adult Swim in 2027.
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