Here’s What Anya Taylor-Joy Has to Say About a ‘Queen’s Gambit’ Season 2

Will we get a second season of Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit? Well…maybe. Series star Anya Taylor-Joy would certainly reprise her role as troubled chess prodigy Beth Harmon, if asked.

“It’s so surreal and very wonderful that people want a second season, because we never thought about it, there was no discussion about it,” she told Deadline. “That said, never say ‘never’ in Hollywood.”

The Queen’s Gambit was a hit among audiences and critics alike, bringing millions of streams to Netflix; naturally, people want more. But alas, it’s based on a novel that doesn’t have a sequel, so it would be hard to stretch the story any farther. “The last scene feels like a beautiful note to end the show on, so I’m not sure if we want to go on and answer that question. Maybe we can just let the audience imagine what comes next,” Taylor-Joy told Town & Country.

If you do want to imagine more episodes, like Harmon playing chess in her mind and on the ceiling of her bedroom, then try giving the girl a kid of her own. “It would be very interesting to see how Beth would be as a mother, now that she’s sober and more cognizant of the demons that pull her down,” mused Taylor-Joy to Deadline.

The actor described the process of inhabiting this character as an instinctual one. After reading the book, she remembered, “I said to myself, ‘If we were shooting tomorrow, I know exactly what I’m doing, I know how I want to do it, I understand this woman so well.’” On set, the performance came to her: “With Beth, it was instincts on a whole other level, I never had to reach for anything…They just had to yell ‘action’ and something would happen.”

Her work as Beth Harmon earned the actor a Golden Globe nomination in the limited series category, but she’s also nominated in the comedy category for her starring role in Emma. So, Beth Harmon or no, we’ll be seeing a lot more of Anya, soon!