The Buccaneers Season 2 Premiere: Leighton Meester Makes Dramatic Entrance As [Spoiler]'s Mother
Leighton Meester may have traded in her Upper East Side pearls for The Buccaneers' English corsets, but the girl's gossiping days are far from over.
Season 2 of the Apple TV+ drama premiered on Wednesday, picking up right where we left off: Nan's wedding day. In case you need a refresher, Season 1 ended with Nan deciding to marry Theo and gaining the duchess title in order to protect both her sister Jinny and mother Patti, who've left their respective spouses. This all came at a personal cost to Nan: She had just professed her love to Guy, who is now M.I.A. after offering to protect Jinny in hideout. (Read finale recap.)
As if that all weren't messy enough, the Season 2 premiere sees Patti's fiery sister, Nelle (played by Meester), showing up at the wedding uninvited to give viewers a game-changing piece of information: She is Nan's biological mother. (We learned Patti wasn't Nan's biological mother last season.) Nelle apparently had an affair with Patti's husband back when she was 18, and the sisters haven't spoken since. Nelle and Patti face off in a backroom during the wedding reception, with Patti admitting she blamed Nelle more than her own husband for the long-ago affair. But the two ultimately make up and head back to America together — leaving the philandering Tracy to fend for himself abroad.
Meanwhile, Nan is clueless to Nelle's real identity, though the two seem drawn to each other. Midway through her wedding festivities, Nan randomly confesses all her anxieties to Nelle. Only later, at the end of the episode, Nan asks Patti, "How long ago did you fall out?" Patti tells the 19-year-old Nan that it's been 19 years since Patti last spoke with her sister. Nan already knows Patti isn't her birth mom, but she hasn't been made aware of her birth mom's identity. Now, a knowing look flashes across her face; the Duchess is seemingly piecing together that the family fallout might be related to the maternity mystery.
The episode ends with Nan strengthening her bond with her own faraway sister — whose disappearance has caused much speculation in the press — by making a mess of her own. Taking her mother-in-law's advice, Nan decides to use her first official event as Duchess of Tintagel as an opportunity to show the world how she intends to behave: Instead of arriving to the formal affair in a black dress, and standing off to the side behind her Duke husband, the rebellious American arrives in a scandalous red gown — stealing the spotlight and replacing her sister's story on the front-page news.
What'd you think of all the messiness already underway in The Buccaneers Season 2? Grade the premiere episode in the poll below, then hit the comments with your thoughts!