If 2017’s Psych: The Movie left you wanting more, then 2020 is officially your year: The sequel, Psych 2: Lassie Come Home, will premiere in 2020, six years after the series signed off on USA after eight seasons.
James Roday and Dulé Hill will reprise their roles of Shawn and Gus, respectively, for this brand-new adventure that won’t be the John Cena vehicle it was originally intended to be. However, as details have come out about what to expect of Lassie Come Home, the film follow-up sounds like it’s actually much better than creator Steve Franks‘ initial concept (not that we would say no to a Cena cameo). Check out everything we know so far about Psych 2: Lassie Come Home below.
It’s debuting in 2020 — but not on USA. Although the film was originally supposed to premiere on USA in winter 2019, it was announced in September that Lassie Come Home would now be debuting on NBCUniversal’s upcoming streaming service, Peacock, which won’t launch until April 2020. No official date has been set for the film’s premiere, but this means that spring 2020 is the earliest that it could air.
Timothy Omundson is back. When Psych: The Movie was first announced, Timothy Omundson, who plays Carlton Lassiter, was hospitalized after suffering a stroke. As a result, Omundson wasn’t able to return for a large role in the first movie, although his character made a brief appearance when Juliet (Maggie Lawson) FaceTimed him. This time around, though, Lassie will feature prominently in the film, which is even named after Omundson’s character.
The movie will be a nod to Hitchcock. The logline for the film reveals that it will be “a vintage Psych-style Hitchcockian nod” that will find Lassiter having been ambushed on the job and left for dead. The event will prompt Shawn and Gus to return to Santa Barbara, where Lassie has started to see impossible occurrences happening in his recovery clinic. “Separated from their new lives in San Francisco, our heroes find themselves unwelcome in their old stomping grounds as they secretly untangle a twisted case without the benefit of the police, their loved ones, or the quality sourdough bakeries of the Bay Area. What they uncover will change the course of their relationships forever,” the official description warns.
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The first teaser for it will get you hyped. The first promo for Lassie Come Home, released in June, features Roday and Hill getting fans primed for the sequel. “It’s everything you love, nothing you don’t,” Roday told the Psych-Os in the charming video.
There will be a two-year time jump. Dulé Hill confirmed to TV Guide the film won’t be picking up right where the last movie left off, with Shawn, Gus, and Ewan (Cena) getting caught up in a clandestine international caper. “We continue in real time,” Hill said, adding that the sequel will fill in “exactly what has happened over these past two years we haven’t seen [the characters].”
All your old favorites will return. In addition to Roday, Hill, Omundson, and Lawson, Lassie Come Home will also feature original Psych stars Kirsten Nelson as Karen Vick and Corbin Bernsen as Henry Spencer. However, it hasn’t been confirmed whether or not Kurt Fuller, who made a cameo in the first Psych movie, will reprise his role as Woody the coroner in the sequel film.
Mary Lightly will be back. Jimmi Simpson shared a video on Twitter in April teasing his return as Mary Lightly. Since Mary was killed in Season 4, Psych has gotten quite creative when it comes to finding clever ways to bring back the fan-favorite character — including that memorable dream sequence from the first movie — and Simpson told TV Guide in June that his appearance in Lassie Comes Home won’t be any different.
While Simpson couldn’t say much, he did tease that this may be “the weirdest Mary situation yet” and that there will be singing involved once more. “Come on. I mean, we’re not assholes, James [Roday] and I. We know how to do this,” he said.
So @jimmisimpson teased Psych: The Movie 2 and we CANNOT WAIT 🤣 https://t.co/SUme13ikKZ pic.twitter.com/78MuIvOffc
— TV Guide (@TVGuide) June 14, 2019
Joel McHale has landed a crucial supporting role. In April 2019, Omundson revealed that Joel McHale will be a “very special guest” in the sequel film on Twitter. USA’s later put out a character description for McHale’s role, sharing that he’s “a mysterious character from Lassie’s past.” With all the ambiguity surrounding McHale’s character, it seems pretty clear that whoever the actor is playing will be a pivotal figure in the film.
Shawn and Juliet will be enjoying married life. After trying the knot in the first movie, Shawn and Juliet will now being enjoying some well-deserved marital bliss in the sequel. “I feel like for Shawn and Juliet there’s been, like, eight years of ‘will they, won’t they.’ Then it was ‘they will,’ then there was like a little, ‘where are we, what are we doing?’ … And then we hadn’t gotten married yet. And now we’re married, and we’re just, like, in!” Maggie Lawson told reporters in January. While the pair’s different approaches to crime-solving might cause minor conflicts in the upcoming film, “for the most part, we’re just enjoying married life immensely,” Lawson said. “Yeah, we’re in bliss.”
There are potentially more sequels in the works. Creator Steve Franks revealed to revealed to TV Guide in 2017 that when he pitched the first movie, he already was hoping to do an additional five films. “I steered it right towards doing one [movie], and I realized by saying something over and over maybe I could talk it into existence. So I thought if I can talk into existence one, maybe I can talk into existence six,” Franks said.
One can only hope.
Psych: The Movie 2 will debut on USA this fall.
Dule Hill and James Roday, Psych