Owen Wilson's Apple TV Series 'Stick' Finally Finds Its Swing in Season 2 | Review

Published Oct 29, 2026, 9:01 AM EDT Taylor Gates is an Indiana native who earned her BFA in Creative Writing from the University of Evansville. She fell in love with entertainment by watching shows about chaotic families like Full House, The Nanny, Gilmore Girls, and The Fosters. After college, she moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career as a writer, editor, and filmmaker. Today, she’s a sucker for dramedies — especially coming-of-age stories centering around complex female and LGBTQ+ characters. She has been with Collider since May 2022. Apple TV has gradually established itself as one of the best streamers around, churning out high-quality projects and actually giving them a chance to find an audience. Holding an 81% on Rotten Tomatoes, Stick Season 1 garnered solid reviews, but it never got the attention of juggernauts like Severance, Widow’s Bay, or even the comparable feel-good sports dramedy Ted Lasso. Thankfully, it was still renewed for a sophomore installment, with the opportunity to find its swing (pun intended) and capitalize on all the potential present from the start. What Is ‘Stick’ Season 2 About? Stick Season 2 sees all the characters grappling with big decisions. The end of Season 1 teased that Pryce (Owen Wilson) might find himself back on the course as a player again instead of staying on the sidelines as a coach — a plot point that takes center stage in this second outing. Though initially reluctant, considering he’s been out of the game so long and is now decades older than most of the other competitors, Mitts (Marc Maron) and Clark’s (Timothy Olyphant) encouragement eventually convinces him to pick up the clubs again. Of course, he’ll need some serious practice to have a fighting shot. After the devastating revelation that his former coach, Butch (Rex Linn), is suffering from Alzheimer’s, he enlists Butch’s daughter Amanda (Rhea Seehorn) to help him prepare, though the fact that Pryce and Amanda have a romantic history that didn’t end well the first time around threatens to complicate things. Meanwhile, Santi (Peter Dager) debates whether to take a full-ride golf scholarship to IU or go pro. Pryce insists that Santi should pick college in order to get an education and work on his mental game, but Santi is tempted by the glamorous life an agency offers if he chooses to sign with them. Santi’s decision also influences Elena (Mariana Treviño), who struggles to be taken seriously as Santi’s manager while juggling big advancements in her relationship with Mitts, and Zero (Lilli Kay), who is trying to achieve her own goals. ‘Stick’ Season 2 Gives Its Characters Satisfying Growth Image via Apple TV One of the biggest criticisms of Stick Season 1 was that Santi and Zero often acted like cliché, whiny teenagers. Luckily, they’re written with more maturity and nuance in Season 2, making their characters both more likable and interesting. Dager does an excellent job of portraying how much pressure Santi is under as he is forced to make enormous, life-altering decisions at just 18 years old while being pulled in countless directions, and it’s a treat to watch Kay develop relationships and find purpose outside of Santi. The inevitable conflict this causes in their dynamic is more sophisticated and intriguing than in the first season. Seeing Pryce attempt to become the oldest person to ever win the US Open is both fun and inspirational, showcasing the message that you’re never too old to follow your dreams. Though there are plenty of nice training montages, Stick doesn’t shy away from addressing the emotional work Pryce needs to do as well, forcing him to interrogate why he constantly self-destructs. One of the strongest storylines involves Amanda making him see a sports psychologist to unpack his trauma. The few childhood flashbacks peppered throughout are a bit on the nose and unnecessary, but it’s genuinely moving to watch Pryce’s mental health journey unfold. Season 2 beefs up Olyphant’s role from a recurring part to a main character, and it's a decision that really pays off. While he made for a delicious antagonist in Season 1, it’s a blast to see him become part of the gang without losing any of his hilariously egocentric personality. He continues to steal just about every scene he’s in, and one particular storyline involving him and Missi Pyle’s character is one of the wildest of the series so far. ‘Stick’ Season 2 Still Struggles With Pacing and Oversimplifying Its Relationships Image via Apple TV Stick Season 1 struggled with pacing — a problem it hasn’t figured out how to fix in Season 2. It’s a breezy watch, with every episode around 30 minutes, but many of them end without feeling like much progress was made. The show also occasionally suffers from the “second-screen viewing” phenomenon, where similar conversations are had multiple times in case viewers missed them the first go-around. While the plot mainly suffers from sluggishness, a few plot points are brushed over too quickly and without much build-up, especially for Amber-Linn’s (Judy Greer) arc. Seehorn is a welcome addition, even if the material she has to work with is a mixed bag. She shines brightest when the show focuses on her dynamic with Butch, which she plays with heartbreaking restraint and groundedness. Caring for an aging parent who has both reassuringly good days and discouragingly bad days is all too familiar for countless people, and her performance is sure to make many feel seen. Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which Iconic Romance Is Your Favorite? Harry & Sally · Love & Basketball · Heated Rivalry · Titanic Four great love stories, and four completely different ideas of what love actually is. One is a friendship that took twelve years to admit itself. One is two people who refuse to stop competing. One happens entirely behind closed doors. And one lasts five days and never stops mattering. Eight questions decide which one is really yours. 🍂Harry & Sally(1989) 🏀Love & Basketball(2000) 🏒Heated Rivalry(HBO Max) 🚢Titanic(1997) FIND YOUR ROMANCE → 01 How does your love story start? The first scene tells you what kind of story this is going to be. AWe are friends for years before either of us says anything. BWe want the same thing and neither of us backs down. CNobody can know, including our closest friends. DOne look across a room and everything changes. NEXT QUESTION → 02 What do the two of you keep arguing about? Every great romance has one fight it has over and over. AWhether this is actually happening, and what to call it. BWhose career comes first this year. CWhether we will ever be honest about this in public. DNothing small. When we fight, it is about everything. NEXT QUESTION → 03 How do you show somebody that you love them? Grand gestures are easy to write. This is the harder question. AI remember every single thing they have told me. BI show up to the things that matter to them. CI keep their secrets like they are my own. DI would give up something enormous for them. NEXT QUESTION → 04 What is actually standing in the way? There is always something. Which something tells you the genre. ATiming. We keep finding each other at the wrong moment. BAmbition. We both want big lives and they do not match. CThe world. It is not safe to be open about this yet. DEverybody around us has decided this cannot happen. NEXT QUESTION → 05 Which romantic moment gets you every single time? Be honest. There is one that works on you and you know which. ASomebody running across a city to say it before midnight. BSomebody in the stands who stayed until the very end. CA look across a crowded room that nobody else catches. DSomebody promising to hold on, and meaning it. NEXT QUESTION → 06 What would you actually risk for the right person? Every romance asks this. Most people find out far too late. AA friendship I could never get back. BThe plan I have had for my life since I was a kid. CMy privacy. All of it would become public. DEverything. I would not think about it for long. NEXT QUESTION → 07 Where are the two of you in ten years? Some love stories are about the meeting. Some are about the staying. AStill talking. We have never run out of things to say. BBuilding something together, both of us still ambitious. CFinally open about it, after years of being careful. DApart, and I still think about it constantly. NEXT QUESTION → 08 Which of these sounds most like something you would say? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides your romance. AI would rather talk to you than anybody else, forever. BI am not giving up either of us. We find a way to have both. CThis is mine, and I am not explaining it to anyone. DI would do the whole thing again, even knowing how it ends. REVEAL MY ROMANCE → Roll The Credits Your Romance Is…Four love stories, four completely different ideas of what it means to be somebody's person. This is the one that matches how you actually fall, and what it would ask of you. Harry & SallyYou do not fall for strangers. You fall for the person you have already been talking to for years, which is the slowest and by some distance the most durable way anybody has found to do this. When Harry Met Sally made the case that the best romance is an argument you enjoy, conducted over a decade, by two people refusing to admit what is happening. You want to be known rather than swept away. Somebody who remembers your worst story is doing better work than anybody arriving with flowers. The film is unusually honest about timing. These two are wrong for each other repeatedly until suddenly they are not, and neither of them engineered it. You would still be talking about everything at eighty. That is the entire promise. Love & BasketballYou want a partner, not an audience. Somebody who wants their own life as badly as you want yours, and who would never ask you to be smaller to make the relationship easier. This is the rare romance where both people have a real career and the film takes both of them equally seriously. You would rather be pushed than protected. The right person for you is also a bit of a rival, and that never entirely goes away. It understands the actual problem in ambitious relationships. Not whether you love each other, but whose turn it is this year. You would still be competing at forty. That is how you would know it was working. Heated RivalryThe intensity was never the problem. The secrecy is. You are drawn to a love that lives entirely in private, and to the particular ache of wanting somebody you are not supposed to want. Heated Rivalry runs on the oldest engine in romance: two people on opposite sides, meeting in secret, getting far more attached than either of them planned. You keep your private life genuinely private, and something in you finds hidden things more real than public ones. The tension is not only between the two of them. It is between what they have and what it would cost either one to say it out loud. Years of this, and the whole story is really about whether either of them will finally stop hiding. TitanicYou do not do this cautiously. When it happens for you it is immediate and total and it rearranges everything, and you would not accept a smaller version of it. Titanic gave us the biggest romance in film history and then made it last about five days, which is precisely the point of it. You measure love by intensity rather than duration. A few days of the real thing beats decades of something merely comfortable. The film is not only about the romance. It is about a woman who went on to live an enormous life afterwards because of it. You would still be telling this story at a hundred years old, and telling it exactly the same way. ↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ Unfortunately, Stick doesn’t handle the romantic tension between Amanda and Pryce with the same amount of nuance. There are moments where it’s easy to root for them (a silly yet sexy strip golf scene is particularly clever), and Amanda’s tough-love approach is mostly enjoyable, but their conflicts can be overly simplistic and even a bit childish. The way they behave in their relationship when they face challenges isn’t too dissimilar to Santi and Zero, which is a problem considering there’s a 30+-year age gap between the two couples. The same can be said for Elena and Mitts’ dynamic, which never feels as authentic as one would hope. Stick Season 2 may suffer from some of the same problems it faced the first time around and doesn’t always go as deep as one might hope, but it’s still a perfectly pleasant watch. Santi and Zero’s storylines are both more compelling than ever, Olyphant’s upped screen time is a true delight, and Seehorn and Linn prove to be great additions. The show’s handling of mental health and aging parents sets it apart, sending important messages without ever getting too preachy or saccharine. Stick's return might not have secured a hole-in-one, but it’s still well under par. Stick Season 2 premieres November 4 on Apple TV. Release Date June 4, 2025 Network Apple TV+ Pros & Cons Season 2 does a great job tackling themes of mental health and aging parents. Rhea Seehorn and Rex Linn prove to be great additions, and Timothy Olyphant's increased screentime is a treat. Santi and Zero are written with more sophistication and nuance than in Season 1. The show's pacing fluctuates between feeling slow and brushing over important plotlines too quickly. Amanda and Pryce's relationship feels overly simplistic and immature at times.