The Old Man EPs Preview Jeff Bridges and John Lithgow's 'Epic Journey' in Season 2

When FX's The Old Man returns for Season 2, things are going to look different. A lot different. After Season 1 spent most of its seven episodes following FBI Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Harold Harper (John Lithgow) as he tracked down former CIA agent Dan Chase (Jeff Bridges), Season 2 will bring them together. And, at least for the handful of episodes that lead off the season, the action will be set in the Middle East, a huge departure from the small towns and dusty backroads of the United States.

At the end of Season 1, Harper and Chase finally connected, sharing a new common goal after their "daughter" Emily (Alia Shawkat) — Chase raised Emily, while Harper mentored her at the FBI — was kidnapped by the terrorist Faraz Hamzad (Navid Negahban), who happens to be her biological father. That episode teased a future in which these two acting legends share the screen together, as Harper and Chase set aside their past differences to bring Emily back to safety. 

"We wanted these two guys to go on a pretty epic journey [in Season 2] to have to get back to Emily, to their daughter," executive producer Dan Shotz told TV Guide at the Television Critics Association summer press tour. "And having that be in Afghanistan this time, you know, it's a complicated place to be in and figure out how to navigate it. It really felt like a like doing a three-episode Western in Afghanistan, which was very exciting to us." 

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Remember, the show is called The Old Man, not The Young Fit Men With Healthy Backs, so putting Chase and, especially, Harper behind enemy lines and back into the field presents plenty of challenges for the duo.

"I think it's hard to go backwards in time in the way that they're trying to, you know, 30 years before when Dan Chase wasn't Dan Chase," co-creator Jon Steinberg told TV Guide. "These two characters had this relationship of being operational, of being in the Navy SEALs, relying on each other. And I think going back into it, but also forcing Harold Harper to be a little bit more boots on the ground than I think he was used to, it's hard for them both to pretend they're young, to remember how to do this job again having been away from it. But it's doubly hard for Harold; he's doing the other guy's job 30 years later." 

But don't worry; Harold does just fine after a few bumps. 

"I was pleasantly surprised and excited by John Lithgow's readiness to jump on a horse and get into it," Steinberg said.

"He's an incredibly good rider!" Shotz added.

While these two head halfway across the globe to retrieve Emily — who also goes by Angela and Parwana, depending on which "father" she's with — she'll be reckoning with the bombshell that her real father is the infamous Hamzad, and realizing that beyond the personas she's crafted in her double life, there's a third side that she never even knew existed. 

"I think this season is really constructed around her," Steinberg said. "Her finding her way through an identity crisis that is more literal than any identity crisis I've ever tried to write before. She is suddenly becoming aware that not only are there two identities that she has to make sense of within her head, but a third, [and] the third is new. It's really foreign to everything else that she's experienced in her life. And in a way it's the most biological. It's the one that sort of touches parts of her that she doesn't have words for. And watching her go through that, watching her figure out how she feels about these three father figures, how she feels about herself and where she belongs, is really traumatic, violent, and confusing."

"And it's also such a raw performance from Alia Shawkat throughout the entire season," Shotz added. 

But Shotz and Steinberg are well aware that Bridges and Lithgow, and the chance to see them side by side for an entire season, are what fans are really looking forward to. 

Steinberg said, "I think the chemistry between not just those two characters, but Jeff and John, [is fantastic], and finally getting a chance to put them together and letting them breathe for a minute — the end of Season 1 was a real treat, but it was so breathless — and letting them have a story in which they could just [be together] was really, really exciting."

The Old Man Season 2 premieres Thursday, Sept. 12 at 10/9c on FX with two episodes, and streams the next day on Hulu.