Ethan Hawke Has Officially Made TV History With His Hit Neo-Western Show's Return

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Published Oct 16, 2026, 5:43 PM EDT

EXCLUSIVE: Ethan Hawke is back on the small screen in FX's crime dramedy The Lowdown, and the actor is making history with this role.

The Lowdown premiered last year to universal acclaim and a Certified Fresh score of 98% on Rotten Tomatoes. Hawke stars as Lee Raybon, a bookstore owner-turned-citizen journalist who lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He sets out to expose corruption wherever it may be hiding and ends up discovering shocking secrets about the city.

A year later, The Lowdown season 2 premiere has just aired, marking a major milestone for Hawke: it's the very first time that he has starred in a live-action series for more than one season. In an interview with ScreenRant's Grant Hermanns, the actor reacted to this achievement, calling himself "lucky" to be given the chance to continue playing Lee.

Hawke, whose previous TV roles include The Good Lord Bird and Moon Knight, noted that "the business of storytelling is always changing," especially now in the age of streaming platforms.

He claimed that TV shows are "so much better" now than when he was growing up because back then, the producers and writers had to churn out as many as 20-25 episodes every year, no matter what the quality was like.

Now many shows have fewer episodes per season, so the creative teams can focus on quality over quantity on everything from the cinematography to the writing.

When it came time to discuss bringing The Lowdown back for an eight-episode second season, creator Sterlin Harjo, who's best known for his work on Reservation Dogs, wanted Lee to be reunited with his father.

After his mother's death, there was this feeling that there should be a family reunion, which "immediately set the stage" for what's to come and "changed the rules of interplay." The producers and writers then used that as a launching pad to figure out the mystery this season.

Ethan Hawke: "It's interesting. I've never done this before. I've never returned to a character like this...And I'm lucky because we're living in a — the business of storytelling is always changing. TV is so much better than it was when I was growing up, and it used to be you did a TV show, you'd do 22 episodes of something. We do eight episodes. The quality of cinematography is so high. The quality of writing is high. The budgets are high, they're higher than they are on independent movies. So the the terrain is difficult, it is changing, and I have to change with it.

"One of the first things that Sterling really thought is, 'I really want to meet this guy's father. That's what I want.' He had this feeling that his mother had passed, and he really wanted to meet this man's father, and that immediately set the stage. It just changed the rules of interplay. And, of course, there's some certain math to the plotting. We had to figure out the mystery, 'What's the mystery aspect of it?" And taking on the Oklahoma prison industrial complex is a big, heavy lift. So throw a father and maybe a love interest [along with the] Oklahoma prison, you got yourself a series, and we went from there."

During the same interview with ScreenRant, Harjo, who also serves as an executive producer, writer and director, admitted that he wanted to keep working with Hawke after the first season of The Lowdown, which turned out to be "such a perfect vehicle for our collaboration." (Hawke is also an executive producer.)

Describing their working relationship, Harjo explained that Hawke regularly calls him to pitch an idea while prepping for that day's work. The show's creator has been very receptive to those suggestions, which helps raise the stakes for the characters and make the series as a whole more entertaining.

In season 2, they don't have to worry about world-building anymore. Now it's about diving straight into the stories and the characters, and finding ways to bring viewers in.

"Part of that is the introduction of Ginger, played by the lovely Betty Gilpin, and also Tommy Lee Jones [as Lee's father]," Harjo said, adding that these two actors in particular "brought so much" to the show, which led him and Hawke to continue growing their collaboration, which was "a joy every day."

Sterlin Harjo: "I think with Ethan, we love working together, it's almost more about that. It's like, 'How do we keep this going and keep collaborating?' And The Lowdown is such a perfect vehicle for our collaboration. We really get to work as friends and as director and actor and writer, both writers. Every morning, Ethan will call me with an idea, 'Well, I was reading this thing.' He's prepping for the day's work, and then he has an idea, and he'll talk to me about it. I'm like, 'Yeah, go for it,' and then we'll find another idea through that idea once we're on set. So it was really just the excitement of telling the story, but also like, 'How do we tell this story, bring more stakes to it, make it more interesting, make it more fun?'

"We have the benefit now of not having to build the world. Season 1, we did the world-building; now, people know the world. 'How do we just get it going right off the bat?' And part of that is the introduction of Ginger, played by the lovely Betty Gilpin, and also Tommy Lee Jones, so it was really fun, and they brought so much to this thing that Ethan and I already had going, and this collaborative spirit just grew. It was a joy every day.

Hawke's co-stars on The Lowdown include Keith David, Rafael Casal, Kaniehtiio Horn, Ryan Kiera Armstrong and Jeanne Tripplehorn. Garrett Basch, Ryan Hawke, Scott Teems and Duffy Boudreau are executive producers with Harjo and Hawke.

Only two episodes of The Lowdown season 2 have aired so far, but FX's decision to bring Hawke back for a history-making role in his career has proven to be the right call, as critics are once again praising the series, which currently has a perfect Rotten Tomatoes score.

The Lowdown season 2 airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. EDT on FX and the next day on Hulu.