‘The Following’ season 2 spoilers: A possible new love interest enters the fold

We’re going to start this article on “The Following” out with a disclaimer: Sometimes, certain castings can be used to jump to conclusions. If you proceed reading this article, you may take this as a sign that certain events are going to happen on the show moving forward, so be prepared for that.

Following up the news that recent “Dexter” guest star Sam Underwood is a new series regular as a dangerous young man who could be a follower of Joe Carroll’s teachings, we’re now hearing via TVLine that “Boss” actress Connie Nielsen has been booked to play the series regular role of Lily Gray, an art dealer in Soho who begins to have a troubled sort of connection to Kevin Bacon’s Ryan Hardy. Does this mean for a fact that the two are hooking up, or that another love interest played by Natalie Zea is officially out of the picture? Not necessarily, but we can understand why it would be easy to come to such conclusions.

“The Following” already has a pretty immense challenge for itself leading into the second season: Trying to find a way to keep so many of the fans who watched the first season still excited. We’re going to say what could be a controversial opinion here: The show would have been better off killing Joe and starting fresh than bringing him back and taking us through the same emotional wringer. Now that we’ve made that stance clear, the challenge for the writers becomes changing our mind, and making us think that there is still a story left to tell here rather than just more of the same.

“The Following” is going to once again have 15 episodes, and will premiere on Fox early next year.

Photo: Fox