The Pop Culture Pundit

The Trailer Detective takes a closer look at movie trailers and comments on obscure, overlooked, or other random things that appear in the film preview.

In high school and college, I was obsessed with the CW TV show Riverdale. This can be evidenced now by my many posts about Mr. Fantasy, the alleged alter ego of KJ Apa, who portrayed Archie on Riverdale. A few years back in 2023, fellow Riverdale actor Charles Melton received lots of awards buzz for his portrayal as a husband in a questionable relationship in the film May December. This was so important to me–Charles Melton is going to be the first Riverdale alum to score an Oscar nom!, I excitedly thought–so much so that I printed up a photo of him for my inspiration board. Well, I clicked the wrong printer settings and what I thought would be a 2×4 photo was an 8.5×11” picture of Charles Melton that consumed entire piece of paper. Not wanting to waste printer ink as a college student, I hung it up in the hallway of my dorm room, and it became something that made each day a little bit better. Because even if he was tragically snubbed from the Academy Awards, he still won over my heart.

This is all to say that Charles Melton once again became extremely relevant in my life today when the trailer for Beef season 2 dropped and featured him with a mustache. Let’s take a look:

^{Screenshot/Netflix via YouTube}

And here’s another shot, where he seems to be angrily lifting weights:

^{Screenshot/Netflix via YouTube} 

There’s a lot to unpack here, but mostly it’s that he is absolutely rocking the ‘stache in a Benson Boone-like way I didn’t know was possible. It is quite the transformation from Riverdale–but that’s probably because he played a high schooler for six seasons when, in real-life, he is currently thirty-five (meaning he was playing a 17-year-old at age 32 when the show ended in 2023). 

Season 2 of Beef sees Melton’s character married to a woman played by Cailee Spaeny. You might think that Melton and Spaeny, then, would be the characters beefing, but they are actually beefing with another married couple played by Carey Mulligan and Oscar Isaac. Between this quartet, the cast is absolutely stacked–and that’s not even mentioning Academy Award winner Youn Yuh-jung amongst the crew this season. As the trailer notes, the four who are beefing have all been nominated for Golden Globes (with Isaac winning), so mathematically, it is impossible for this season to not be nominated for a million awards. The first season, which followed Ali Wong and Steven Yeun’s characters who are–you guessed it–involved in a beef, won a million awards for both stars including Golden Globes and Emmys, so there is already a precedent set for critical acclaim.

Yeun’s character in the first season also sported a mustache, though it was significantly less prominent than Melton’s:

^{Screenshot/Netflix via YouTube}

Maybe it is going to become tradition in this anthology series for a character each season to be sporting some type of mustache, similar to how it was tradition in Community to have a paintball episode each season. 

It is clear since Riverdale, the stars have transformed to play unique, interesting characters–Apa transformed in an Austin Powers-type popstar with Mr. Fantasy, Lili Reinhart portrayed a third-grader as a 28-year-old in Hal & Harper, and now Melton has grown a mustache to beef with other characters that do not have mustaches. I am excited to see what happens in this season, in big part because of Melton and that mystical magical mustache, but also because we have four incredible actors gracing our screens in what will surely be a thrilling season of television. 

^{Netflix via YouTube}

Season 2 of BEEF premieres April 16 on Netflix.