Everything We Know About a Potential Season 2 Return for Laura Donnelly’s ITV Thriller ‘The Dark’

‘The Dark’ has only just landed on screens, but fans hooked on Laura Donnelly’s gripping performance are already wondering whether DI Monica Kennedy will get another case. The six part crime drama premiered on ITV1 and STV on Sunday, July 12, 2026, and its chilling premise has viewers buzzing about where the story could go next.

For those unfamiliar, ‘The Dark’ follows Donnelly as a Scottish detective investigating a young man’s body found staged in the wilderness, a case that spirals into a terrifying hunt for a serial killer hiding in plain sight. Given the strength of the source material and the show’s built in franchise potential, the question of a second season feels less like idle speculation and more like a matter of when.

Laura Donnelly Leads ‘The Dark’ Into Uncharted Scottish Territory

‘The Dark’ is adapted from GR Halliday’s 2020 novel ‘From the Shadows’, with Matt Hartley handling the adaptation alongside writers Lena Rae and Nessah Muthy. The series was commissioned by ITVX back in July 2025, and Gilles Bannier serves as lead director and executive producer.

Donnelly stars as DI Monica Kennedy, a detective who becomes entangled in a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a killer while her own troubled history threatens to compromise her judgment. Mark Rowley plays her new partner DC Connor Crawford, with Helen Baxendale rounding out the cast as Bethany Morgan, a mother whose missing son becomes tied to the investigation.

The production filmed extensively around Greenock and other rural stretches of the Scottish lowlands, giving the series the atmospheric, windswept backdrop that has become something of a signature for ITV’s crime output. Donnelly has spoken about what drew her to the role, telling the Press Association that the series prioritizes storytelling over gratuitous violence and gore, and that she found it notable the show centers on missing men rather than following the more familiar pattern of female victims in crime dramas.

‘The Dark’ Season 2 Renewal Status Explained

Here is the most important detail for anyone hoping for more Monica Kennedy. When Deadline Hollywood first reported Donnelly’s casting back in August 2025, the outlet described ‘The Dark’ specifically as a returnable serial killer drama, language that signals ITV always envisioned this as a franchise rather than a one off miniseries.

That said, no official season 2 renewal has been announced as of this writing. ITV has not confirmed a second season, and with the first episode having only just aired, the broadcaster is almost certainly waiting to see how ratings and critical reception shake out before making that call.

It is worth noting that tracking sites monitoring the show’s status list its renewal as not yet known, which lines up with the reality that ITV rarely commissions a follow up season before a debut run has finished airing and been properly assessed. Fans should expect any concrete announcement to come only after all six episodes have aired and viewership numbers are in.

The ‘From the Shadows’ Book Series Gives Season 2 a Clear Path Forward

One major reason optimism around a second season feels justified is the source material itself. GR Halliday’s ‘From the Shadows’ is actually the first book in a series of Monica Kennedy novels, meaning the television adaptation has plenty of built in story to draw from if ITV does greenlight more episodes.

The follow up novel is titled ‘Dark Matters’, with a third book called ‘Under the Marsh’ continuing Kennedy’s story beyond that. This gives showrunners a ready made blueprint, sparing them from having to invent an entirely new case from scratch the way many crime dramas must once they exhaust their source novel.

Halliday, who grew up near Stirling and has described being fascinated by the unexplained mysteries his own father investigated, has built his Monica Kennedy series specifically as a multi book saga, which further supports the idea that ‘The Dark’ was always designed with longevity in mind rather than as a standalone event series.

What a Second Season Could Look Like for DI Monica Kennedy

If ITV does move forward, it seems reasonable to expect Donnelly and Rowley to reprise their roles as Kennedy and Crawford, given how central their partnership is to the show’s cat and mouse structure. Whether Helen Baxendale’s character would return is less certain, since Bethany Morgan’s arc is tightly bound to the central mystery of season one.

A season built around ‘Dark Matters’ would likely relocate the investigation to a new case while retaining Kennedy’s damaged personal history as an ongoing thread, since the first season’s marketing has already teased that her past could become her biggest liability. That kind of serialized emotional throughline tends to be exactly what keeps procedural dramas renewed season after season on British television.

Executive producer Ben Stephenson’s production company Poison Pen, along with ITV Studios, would presumably continue steering the series if it returns, and given that ITV Studios also handles international distribution for ‘The Dark’, a second season could find an even wider audience beyond the UK.

For now, all eyes are on how the six episode debut run performs with both critics and viewers throughout its broadcast. With a bestselling book series still largely untapped and a returnable format built into its DNA from day one, ‘The Dark’ looks like a strong candidate for renewal, even if ITV hasn’t made it official yet.

What did you think of Monica Kennedy’s first case, and which Halliday novel would you want to see ‘The Dark’ tackle if season 2 gets the green light?