When Ben Watkins, the creator, writer, and actor in Prime’s “Cross” was breaking story for Season 2, he didn’t imagine the world would catch up to him. “We actually filmed all of season two before season one dropped,” said Watkins in a BET Current exclusive. Yet, a show that already felt urgent in subject matter arrived in a moment when its themes read like headlines from the real world: Immigration abuses, child labor laws, sex trafficking, people taking justice into their own hands — season two tackles all of these serious themes with sharp precision.

“We had no idea it was going to become this worldwide hit,” he said, adding with understandable discomfort, “I wish these were issues that were resolved.” But because they aren’t, Watkins said he hopes the show “will add to the conversation.”

What makes Season 2 pop is the show’s raw, moral gutsiness. “Cross” writers built a villain you can (at least at first) root for. Watkins called that the show’s biggest risk. “If you make [the villain] too dimensional and too surfacy, you almost let the audience off the hook.” That villain in question is Jeanine Mason’s “Rebecca,” a bloodthirsty avenger whose intelligence and long game make her chillingly believable.

Mason’s performance is one of the season’s strangest gifts. She leans into a character who “uses the law as a weapon,” yet, as the actress explained, it wasn’t hard to justify her choices. “I understood why she would have arrived at the conclusion that no one was coming to avenge her and her people,” she said. The result is a villain who is methodical, almost ritualistic in her pursuit. “Every time she’s in her violence, it’s almost like a dance… like a ballet,” Mason shared. That choreography of revenge makes viewers complicit and uneasy in a way many procedurals may not dare.

The leading man of “Cross,” Aldis Hodge (who plays “Alex Cross”) carries the weight of the show’s conscience. He helps his castmates lean into the unease of the season. The reversal of roles from Season 1 — where “Samson” (Isaiah Mustafa) held the emotional center — forces Cross into an older, sterner kind of leadership. “He’s coming to a place where he feels better… more in control, a little bit more intentional. And then things kind of fly off the rails from there,” Watkins told us about Cross’ arc. 

“There’s a whole vigilante storyline. Is doing bad things to people for the right reasons good or bad?” Watkins asked. The question unravels through billionaire philanthropy that masks power grabs, immigration enforcement that brutalizes families, and corporate corners where child labor and exploitation are quietly tolerated. “You dig deeper and you realize… now they’re in a position where it’s hard to stop them,” he said. 

That is why the series feels political without being preachy. The cast described doing research with attorneys, advocacy groups, and real people affected by the issues tackled in the show. Mason, who is first-generation Cuban American, leaned into her own background. “Immigration rights are something that is very close to my heart,” she told us, recounting conversations with lawyers and family-unification groups that informed Rebecca’s methods and motives. Her empathy for the character’s rage (even when she disagrees with the method) is what makes the season’s big sit-down between Cross and Rebecca so combustible.

For other actors, Season 2 offered a chance to deepen wildly complicated characters. Johnny Ray Gill — whose “Bobby Trey” surfaced as a cult favorite in Season 1 — leaned into the character’s metaphorical relationship to capitalism. Gill said, “I think ‘Cross’ does a great job of examining systems. In diving into Bobby Trey, I'm trying to examine systems, not a two-dimensional villain.” He continued, “Capitalism is incredibly charming, but also incredibly vicious.” The show asks hard questions through personal choices. Gill asked, “Is it morally ambiguous if someone is so poor that they have to rob a grocery store for Pampers?” Alona Tai (“Kayla Craig”) responded, “Sometimes survival isn’t a choice, it’s a necessity.” 

Watkins’ own return to the screen as “Roy McElhannon” is a delight. He started as an actor before switching to writing, and when the production couldn’t find the right Roy, his co-showrunner nudged him on set. “They said, ‘Why don’t you play Roy?’” Watkins recalled. The result is a writer who got knocked out on camera and learned firsthand the discipline the cast expects. “They were making me keep up… my castmates were tough. They wanted me to win,” Watkins said. 

That level of craft captured a global audience and broke records. Season 1 drew roughly 40 million viewers in the first 20 days, a figure Watkins cites as both a validation and a pressure point. But the show’s creators didn’t write for virality; they wrote truth. “We were on this (hard topics) before it became an avalanche,” Hodge said, noting the writers’ room’s ability to sense cultural shifts and dramatize them responsibly. “There are ways to get ahead of things and stop the bleed before it gets really crazy for society, for governance, for people in judicial positions of power.”

Matthew Lillard, who plays a morally corrupt billionaire (“Lance Durand”), said, “Everyone is looking at what's happening right now in Minnesota. Not to get too political, but everyone's going to have a point of view. Like, when is enough enough? When are we going to break? When is the other side going to break? The tension right now is so real in America.”

“Cross” Season 2 is not comfortable TV. The show wants you to feel the moral friction, the righteous anger, and live inside it for an hour at a time, and then hold up a mirror to see how far that anger can go. As Watkins put it, “I wanted to have a vigilante because I wanted to live vicariously through a character that really was targeting bad people that seemed to be getting away with anything and everything.” The season also forces the question Watkins said he hoped a viewer would ask by the finale, “Did she (the villain) go too far?”

Season 2 of “Cross” dropped on Feb. 11 with three episodes and then unfolds weekly. Expect to be unsettled, to argue with your dinner companions, and — at the end — to find that the show has done its job. “I think we, as a people, always love when somebody gets theirs,” said Samantha Walkes who plays "Elle Monteiro." “And even if it's on that line of right or wrong or healthy and unhealthy, good or evil, there's something delicious about watching it.”