What Do We Know About Dept Q Season 2?

After a hit first season – including six weeks in the streaming platform’s global top 10 chart – Netflix renewed its hit Scottish cold case drama. That was in August, after the nine-part series premiered in April 2025.

Flash forward to now, June 2026, and there’s finally movement: filming is underway in Scotland, with new stars added to the cast. Lead star Matthew Goode is set to reprise his role as the ‘extremely abrasive and irascible’ DCI Carl Morck (in the actor’s words), joined by his team of misfits at Edinburgh police’s new cold case unit.

Here’s everything we know so far about Dept Q season 2.

Matthew Goode as DCI Carl Morck in Dept Q. (© Justin Downing/Netflix)

Dept Q Season 2: Plot, Cast, Release Date & More

Based on Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen’s Copenhagen-set Department Q novels, there is plenty of content to mine when it comes to Netflix’s television adaptation. An idea two decades in the works of writer-director Scott Frank’s mind, the action is transposed to Edinburgh for this English-language version. And with the author himself giving Frank the greenlight, it always seemed like a second season was on the cards (and perhaps even more than that…).

When we asked lead star Matthew Goode about the possibility of a second season in summer 2025, he joked the answer was ‘above my pay grade!’.

‘I think it takes about a month for Netflix to collate the figures, but [Dept Q] has got a lot going for it,’ Goode added. ‘There are 10 books to mine more stories from for Department Q, so we’ve all got our fingers crossed. [Director Scott Frank] wants to do it. I’m desperate to do it, and all the rest of the cast are as well, because we had such a good time. But one can’t count one’s chickens.’

Flash forward to mid August, and Netflix had done exactly what Goode predicted: collated the numbers, gathered the stars, and renewed the hit drama. Produced by Left Bank Pictures (the creators of long-running dramas like Outlander and The Crown), Dept Q season 2 will again be filmed in Edinburgh – and production is underway right now.

‘I’m grateful to the folks at Netflix, as well as our shining cast and crew, for once more risking their careers to enable my folly,’ Frank says, with Goode adding ‘I cannot wait to read what comes from [Scott Frank’s] magic quill!’

Matthew Goode as DCI Carl Morck in Dept Q. (© Netflix)

What Will Happen?

No word just yet on the plot of Dept Q season 2 – but we know Morck and his band of misfit detectives will return to unpick another unsolved, complex mystery. Executive producer Rob Bullock teases this ‘terrible crime’ will be ‘hidden in the highest echelons of Scottish society’.

‘It is a story for our times: rich and powerful people who believe they are above the law. Carl, of course, knows otherwise,’ Bullock adds.

To us, this sounds like the plot of Adler-Olsen’s novel, The Absent One (2008). The second in Adler-Olsen’s Morck series – which counts 11 instalments in the original Danish and 10 translated to English so far – this book concerns another long-cold lead that lands on Morck’s desk. This time we flash back two decades, when a brother and sister were brutally murdered. Part of a ring of privileged boarding school students, a suspect confessed and was convicted at the time – but when Morck digs a little deeper, all is not as it seems…

Leah Byrne as Rose in Dept Q. (© Jamie Simpson/Netflix)

The Cast

Matthew Goode will return to his leading role as DCI Carl Morck, along with his team of misfits: Alexej Manvelov as Akram Salim, Leah Byrne as DC Rose Dickinson and Jamie Sives as DS James Hardy.

They will be joined by returning stars Mark Bonnar, Kate Dickie, Aaron McVeigh and Sanjeev Kohli. And there are plenty of new faces on the bill, too, as the team untangles the cold crime. This includes Aisling Franciosi, Greg Wise, Nicholas Rowe, Tony Curran and more.

The full cast we know so far is as follows:

• Matthew Goode as DCI Carl Morck
• Alexej Manvelov as Akram Salim
• Leah Byrne as DC Rose Dickson
• Jamie Sives as DS James Hardy
• Mark Bonnar as Stephen Burns
• Tony Curran as Winnie Calderwood
• Aisling Franciosi as Kimmie
• Greg Wise as Derek Powell
• Nicholas Rowe as Thomas Fulton
• Hamish Clark as Christopher Herron
• Alex Ferns as Phil Allenbeck
• Ross Anderson as Ricky Daddario
• Rebecca Root as June Lovesay
• Isla Johnston as Agnes
• Amy Brenneman as Helen
• Kate Dickie as Moira Jacobson
• Aaron McVeigh as Jasper
• Sanjeev Kohli as Martin Flemming

Speaking on season 1, Goode described the cast as ‘like having a Scottish actor bingo card,’ noting performances from Sives, Bonnar, Byrne, Dickie and Shirley Henderson. With season 2 once again set in Edinburgh, there is plenty of Scottish talent left to mine.

Chloe Pirrie as Merritt Lingard in Dept Q. (Netflix)

Release Date

Filming on Dept Q season 2 is officially underway in Edinburgh. Once season 1 filming was complete, it was around a year before the series premiered, so we’re anticipating Dept Q will be released in the second half of 2027.

All nine episodes of Dept Q season 1 are streaming on Netflix.