Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Heels’ Season 2 on Starz, The Return Of The Drama About A Family Of Professional Wrestlers

Heels (Starz) was renewed for a second season shortly after its first concluded, way back in 2021. So it’s been a minute for fans of the Spade brothers and all of the action inside the squared circle of the Duffy Wrestling League. But the series, created by Michael Waldron (Loki) and starring Stephen Arnell (Arrow) and Alexander Ludwig (Vikings) as the Spades – in wrestling parlance, Jack’s a “heel,” while his younger brother Ace is a “face” – is ready to lace up the boots for eight new episodes. Heels returns Mary McCormack, Alison Luff, Kelli Berglund, and Chris Bauer, while Emmy Raver-Lampman (The Umbrella Academy), Josh Segarra (The Big Door Prize, The Other Two), and former WWE champion AJ Mendez join the cast.  

HEELS – SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

Opening Shot: Heels opens in the immediate aftermath of its first season. As far as visibility and popularity go, the Duffy Wrestling League is riding a real high. But don’t tell that to Ace Spade (Ludwig), who stalks to his vehicle in a huff, fresh from the ring. “Good luck with this shit,” he tells Big Jim Kitchen (Duke Davis Roberts), a fellow wrestler and his longtime best friend. And Ace gets gone. 

The Gist: Younger brother Ace and older brother Jack (Arnell) always had that kind of contentious relationship. You know, screaming match one minute. Jump into the thick of a bar fight at each other’s backs the next. Growing up in the fictional town of Duffy, Georgia, they lived in the long shadow of their father, charismatic wrestler Tom “King” Spade (David James Elliott), who founded the Duffy Wrestling League and established the “Dome” as a beloved local attraction. That doesn’t mean it ever made any real money. Nevertheless, Jack inherited his father’s love of the promotion, of writing stories to perform in the ring and bring entertainment into peoples’ lives, and in season one of Heels he tried to balance that calling with the realities of making a living. The King was dead – Tom Spade only appears in flashbacks – having committed suicide before the events of the series. And with Ace’s star rising in the DWL clashing with his own ambitions for the league, Jack made some bad decisions that turned brother against brother and caused his wife Staci Spade (Luff) to take their son Thomas (Roxton Garcia) and leave.

Season two of Heels flashes back again, to the day Tom Spade shot himself at the family home, his body discovered first by Ace, then Jack, and then their mother Carol (Alice Barrett). Everyone thought that signaled the end of the DWL – Jack, Staci, Ace, Tom’s business partner Willie (McCormack),  talented upstart Crystal (Berglund), rascally veteran Wild Bill Hancock (Bauer), and the league’s stable of wrestlers, including Big Jim, Rooster (Allen Maldonado), Diego (Robby Ramos), and Bobby Pin (Trey Tucker). But a memorial wrestling event and “ten bell salute” for the fallen king brings Ace into the ring as the face to Jack’s heel, and pumps new life into the DWL. Jack was impressed with Ace, who became the star quarterback his father always wanted him to be but had never wrestled. He picked up the moves quickly, like clotheslines and how to absorb bruising “bumps” in the ring, and together the brothers Spade decided to make the DWL into what it always could have been.

Which brings us back to the present, and Ace’s bitter departure from wrestling and Duffy. Jack is trying to make amends with Staci, be a better father to Thomas, fend off increased attacks on the DWL from rival promoter Charle Gully (Mike O’Malley), navigate the league’s ascendance to greater prominence, and still continue to process his father’s suicide. “Take care of Ace,” Tom wrote to Jack in a farewell letter. So how does it look for big brother when he doesn’t even know where Ace is?

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? There is a Righteous Gemstones-ness to Heels, with its southern flavor, flashback format, and the competing and often quirky personalities in the Spade family and their circle. Glow lasted for three fantastic seasons on Netflix. And season one of Sanctuary (also Netflix) ventured inside a sumo training stable in Japan.

Our Take: The Spade brothers had trouble reckoning with their father’s place in their lives, and that was before he committed suicide. “I’m the guy who named his own son after the dead dad he don’t miss,” Jack tells Staci. And during his first big match, when Ace stands up on the top turnbuckle, he imagines Tom winking at his teenage self from the very same ring position. At the center of Heels is always the triangle of influence between the King and his princes, and Stephen Arnell and Alexander Ludwig are dynamite in how they realize that. (David James Elliott, too, in the flashback sequences, is wonderfully cast as Tom.) And while it will be interesting to watch how Jack and Ace make up – if and when that happens – Heels has also established Crystal, played by the terrific Keilli Berglund, as a true contender and change agent for the DWL. The league itself exists in the shadow of its founder. Determining whether that’s forever is another tenet central to Heels, and that gives all of the characters surrounding Jack and Ace the space they need to flourish.

But beyond the trials of family, what Heels is most adept at exploring is the dao of professional wrestling itself. Its beauty and physicality, the grappling and leaps and flips, the drama and the elation that comes with performing for a crowd. “I don’t know how you picked all of that up in a week,” Jack tells Ace after his triumphant debut in the squared circle. “There are wrestlers work their entire careers, don’t tap into what you just did.” Heels taps into it big time.      

Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode of season two, at least. 

Parting Shot: Jack Spade’s dream of reestablishing the DWL name has largely been realized. But the people who matter the most to him aren’t around to share in the moment. And as Jack’s calls to Ace go straight to voicemail, his younger brother hits the accelerator. He’s listening to Boston. But Ace is running down a dream of his own.  

Sleeper Star: Last season, Crystal Tyler raised the belt as a champion, realizing her moment and making right a high-profile ladder match that went wildly off script. Kelli Berglund has also been that champion. In Heels, she brings to life Crystal’s intrinsic knack for sticking the landing in the world of professional wrestling, as well as her natural-born empathy. Plus, Crystal’s everyday driver around Duffy is a totally cool Jeep that’s seven decades old with the patina to prove it.

Most Pilot-y Line: “Jack Spade, wrass-lin’ purist? He’s now deeply, irredeemably fuckin’ fucked in a way he can’t un-fuck his way out of.” Charlie Gully (Mike O’Malley) is definitely fuming in the wake of Duffy Wrestling League’s chaotically successful appearance at the South Georgia State Fair. (O’Malley also wrote the first two episodes of Heels season two.) As the kingpin of Florida Wrestling Dystopia, Gully is Jack Spade’s chief rival. And he’ll have still more to say about the DWL as Heels rolls on.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The twines that bind have always been at the heart of Heels, and here in season two, the stakes are even higher for the Duffy family. They always defined themselves by what happened inside the wrestling ring. To figure out what matters most outside of it remains their biggest challenge.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges