‘Vida’ Season 2: Why EP Tanya Saracho Wanted An Early Streaming Release

Starz is shaking up the release format for “Vida” Season 2. All 10 new episodes of the half-hour drama will release Thursday on the Starz app, but it will still air weekly on the Starz channel every Sunday as well. Showrunner Tanya Saracho hopes audiences binge-watch it. After all, she is the one who pitched the idea of the non-linear release.

“Starz asked me to write a show about Latinx millennials, and Latinx millennials are one of the people we want to reach,” Saracho told International Business Times at a Vida press event in New York. “Millennials of color, they binge, they consume that way… Millennials in general. Everyone kept saying ‘God I wish I could’ve binged it.’”

“Vida” follows two very different Mexican-American sisters, Emma (Mishel Prada) and Lyn (Melissa Barrera), who return to their childhood home in Los Angeles after their mother’s death. They quickly realize their mom had quite a few secrets. She never told them about her wife, Eddy (Ser Anzoategui), or the fact that her bar was in serious trouble. The women want to find a way to keep the local watering hole, a safe space for the LGBTQ community, alive in a quickly gentrifying neighborhood.

Saracho explained that the nature of a half-hour drama means that audiences are always wanting more. She heard the complaints last year as “Vida” Season 1 aired in typical weekly installments.

“It’s half an hour. It’s like when I used to watch other half-hour shows, like ‘Looking’ — that’s pushing my old show now — but ‘Girls,’ stuff like that that I used to be like, [groan] ‘I have to wait one more week for another half hour?’ So I felt people last year,” she told a small group of reporters.

The timeline of the show makes for an easy binge-watch. Season 2 takes place over the span of just a few weeks. With hardly any time jump between episodes, it’s easy for fans to just keep clicking to the next episode every time the credits roll.

“Nine days pass between the first season [and second]. It’s only six weeks since Vidalia died. So you have to put that in perspective,” Saracho explained. “Not that much can happen. Little messes become big character messes. Little story messes become big.”

Those “little messes” will turn into big realizations for Emma and Lynn in “Vida” Season 2 as the sisters are forced to confront some of their flaws.

“But I love big, monumental character moments with small, slower story,” she said. “Because being in the back of a bus coming back from a party, that’s not a big story moment, but it’s a big character moment. You don’t quite know what it means, but you know it’s monumental. … I think that follows a more realistic timeline of how we are. We’re shifted but we’re not changed from one day to the next.”

Fans can start to binge-watch “Vida” Season 2 now. It released Thursday on the Starz app, Starz On Demand and other streaming services with Starz add-ons. Those who want to watch it weekly on TV can tune in for the premiere on Sunday at 9 p.m. EDT on Starz.