Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Welcome To Wrexham’ Season 2 On FX, Where Ryan Reynolds And Rob McElhenney Work To Get Their Welsh Soccer Team Promoted

As anyone who watched Season 1 of Welcome To Wrexham could tell you, the locals in Wrexham, a town in North Wales, were somewhat cautious when Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds bought their beloved football team, but they have bought into the stars’ plan to turn the team’s fortunes around. The team managed to purchase the Racecourse Ground stadium, the world’s oldest international football stadium, which has been the team’s home for its entire existence, and Rob and Ryan are looking to rebuild the condemned standing-room stadium section called the Kop. Their goal was to get the team promoted out of the fifth-tier league the team has resided in since the late ’00s. Season 2 follows the 2022-23 season to see if that critical promotion actually occurs.

WELCOME TO WREXHAM SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney sit down to be interviewed about their soccer team, Wrexham AFC, and give viewers a recap of Season 1 of Welcome To Wrexham. Rob crosses his legs, and Ryan jokingly looks over and awkwardly crosses his legs, too.

The Gist: Wrexham AFC didn’t quite achieve its 2021-22 promotion goal, but they gave their fans a heck of a thrilling ride. And the fans are now completely in Rob and Ryan’s corner, hoping that the two of them, with the help of executive director Humphrey Ker, can bring the team that promotion they desperately need. Like the previous season, the team signs top players and made improvements to the field and other intangibles that are there to help attract those players.

But even Ryan’s “movie money” can’t pay for a new version of the Kop. For that, they’ll need some public money, namely from a UK governmental “Level Up” fund. One of the things that will help facilitate that is a meeting with King Charles, who will visit the Racecourse Ground with Queen Consort Camilla. So Rob and Ryan get etiquette lessons — though Ker, for some reason, doesn’t — to get ready for that meeting.

In the meanwhile, we also hear from the same fans we heard from in Season 1, and find that the first season has made them almost as well-known as the players. The series has also created a global fanbase for the team, and we see fans from the US, Australia, Thailand and elsewhere come to attend games.

As Ker re-explains the English football system, he also explains that promotion comes with bigger crowds, more TV money, etc. With all the money the team has expended to this point to sign players and buy back the Racecourse Ground, promotion at the end of the 2022-23 season is absolutely critical to be able to make the club a sustainable business.

At the beginning of the 2022-23 season, there are some new players, including a new goalkeeper — we see the team’s incumbent goalkeeper, Rom Lainton, rehabbing injuries and talking about the fact that he got knocked out three times last season — and the team wins its first game. But the second game, an away game against rival Chesterfield, is a crushing 2-0 loss.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The real-life Ted Lasso vibes continue for Season 2 of Welcome To Wrexham, though at this point we’re much more invested in the team and fans of Wrexham AFC than the fictional AFC Richmond.

Our Take: As the first season of Welcome To Wrexham played out, the fans and players were becoming even more important to the narrative of the 2021-22 season than Reynolds and McElhenney were. After all, the players were the ones who won or lost, and the fans were the ones who dedicated their lives to this team and followed it through all of its ups and downs. That trend continues in Season 2, as things for Rob and Ryan get real for them financially.

Yes, there’s still a lot of joking around between the pair, especially when they’re taking etiquette lessons, or even when Reynolds jokingly offers to sell one of his four children to raise money to rebuild the Kop.

The second episode is actually better than the first, as we see star forward Paul Mullin talking about his son Albie, who is autistic. At the same time, we hear from Millie, a superfan who even played for the club’s youth team. She is also on the spectrum, and through the team’s disability liaison, she’s been able to not only stay connected to the team and attend the games in the stadium’s “Quiet Zone,” but also has become a friend for Albie.

The more we see of the community around the team, one that has become bigger via the series but at its core is still what binds the residents of the town together, the more we want to watch. Yes, we know the results of this past season, but knowing the extremely high stakes that the team was playing for this season, we still want to see the various ups and downs everyone endured to get there.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: On a Zoom with team advisor Shaun Harvey, telling them the “Level Up” money wasn’t happening, McElhenney closes it out by saying, “Do we need to discuss anything else, other than the fact that they sky is falling?” Then we see scenes of the old Kop being demolished, which Reynolds and McElhenney paid for themselves.

Sleeper Star: We’re going to give this to Harvey in this episode, not just because he’s basically the guy who advises Rob, Ryan and Humphrey on all the ways they need to navigate British bureaucracy, but he breaks his serious nature in the presence of his bosses’ jokes, even when he’s the bearer of bad news.

Most Pilot-y Line: “No one asked me to see an etiquette coach, so I hope I don’t blow it,” says Ker. Folks, just because he’s British doesn’t mean he knows how to act when he meets the royal family.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Welcome To Wrexham continues to show just how much the town of Wrexham and Wrexham AFC are intertwined, and how serious Reynolds and McElhenney are about bringing the team back to its former glory.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.