TL;DR: Arnold Schwarzenegger returns with guns, gags, and dad jokes blazing in FUBAR Season 2, joined by a cast that shines through the mayhem. The spy-comedy series thrives on its mismatched family dynamics and genre-savvy absurdity, but the sheer number of side characters occasionally muddies the mission. Bigger action and tighter focus could elevate it, but as it stands, FUBAR remains a fun, flawed, and affectionately ridiculous ride.

I didn’t think I needed Arnold Schwarzenegger doing CIA dead drops while bickering with his grown daughter about emotional boundaries and romantic trauma, but here we are, two seasons deep into FUBAR, and I’m starting to think this is the role he was always meant to play. It’s not the T-800. It’s not Dutch from Predator. It’s Luke Brunner: a greying spy-dad who is just as likely to disarm a bomb as he is to misuse slang while grounding his adult daughter for being reckless on a mission.

Season 1 laid the groundwork. It was a surprise hit—not in the traditional sense of prestige TV buzz or Emmy contention, but in the kind of way that sneaks up on you like a guilty binge watch at 2 a.m. You pressed play for the nostalgia, but you stayed for the wild tonal shifts, the spy hijinks, and Monica Barbaro’s no-nonsense charisma. Season 2, now on Netflix, expands the sandbox, dials up the stakes, and lets chaos reign inside one very crowded witness protection house. It’s messier, louder, and occasionally confused, but also weirder and funnier.

And if that sounds like a mixed bag, well, that’s because FUBAR is kind of like a CIA go-bag: stuffed to the brim with every possible gadget, joke, or character quirk you could think of, and just a little too heavy for one person to carry alone.

Papa Spy and the Breakfast Chaos

One of the weird joys of FUBAR Season 2 is watching Arnold Schwarzenegger in full sitcom-dad mode, except instead of solving minor suburban problems, he’s field-stripping a rifle while trying to talk Emma out of dating a possibly sociopathic MI6 agent. The premise is basically Spy Kids but for adults who drink too much red wine and yell at the news. Everyone’s cover is blown, and the CIA has hidden the entire team in the same house like a witness-protection season of Big Brother, and yes, it’s as unhinged as it sounds.

There are bickering exes, confused pets, high-tech surveillance, and one particularly unhinged subplot involving a puppet show. It’s what happens when you cram a secret agent soap opera and a dysfunctional family sitcom into a microwave and hit “chaotic neutral.”

The Barbaro Effect

Monica Barbaro remains the real secret weapon. As Emma, she’s whip-smart, tough-as-nails, and refreshingly impatient with everyone’s nonsense—especially her dad’s. There’s real chemistry between her and Schwarzenegger, but more importantly, there’s history. Emma and Luke have a relationship that’s not just funny or tense—it’s painfully believable. When they argue about mission protocol, it feels less like two spies and more like a father-daughter tiff about curfew dressed up in Kevlar.

And when things go south, which they always do in FUBAR, it’s Emma who often carries the emotional weight. She’s still chasing approval, still grappling with trust, still playing grown-up in a world where the men around her keep reverting to adolescent bravado. Barbaro navigates this with a kind of grounded elegance that gives the show its heart, even when it’s busy throwing pies at itself.

Enter the Ex: Guy Burnet as MI6 Sadboi Supreme

There’s something almost Shakespearean about Theodore Chips, Guy Burnet’s emotionally stunted ex-MI6 agent who wants to win Emma’s heart while blowing up power grids. He’s charmingly unstable, hilariously inept with pop culture references (calling Die Hard “the one with the barefoot plumber” is inspired), and fully committed to his role as the most dangerous simp in Western Europe.

Burnet steals the show. In a cast full of comedic talent and scene-stealers, Chips feels like a live grenade of romantic delusion and badly repressed trauma. He’s what would happen if James Bond had a nervous breakdown, fell in love with a therapist, and then tried to destroy capitalism to win her back.

The House Is Too Full

This is where things start to wobble. The cast, while individually delightful, is overstuffed. You’ve got “Uncle” Barry (Milan Carter) trying to hold the moral center, Roo (Fortune Feimster) doing her usual chaos-with-a-heart-of-gold thing, Aldon (Travis Van Winkle) bringing the shirtless bro-energy, and Donnie (Andy Buckley) wandering around like a confused dad at a rave. All of them are great. All of them deserve screen time. But there are just too many people jammed into the same narrative space.

That might work for a hangout sitcom, but FUBAR is still trying to be a spy show, too. And when it comes time to pay off all these character arcs or tie them into a central plot, the series can feel like it’s tripping over its own shoelaces. The stakes are high—a national power grid at risk—but the tone is so zany and crowded that it never quite achieves the kind of tension or momentum it clearly wants.

Action in a Shoebox

Let’s talk about the action. It’s… fine. Sometimes even good. There’s a tango scene that turns into a knife fight that turns into a bomb defusal with bonus romantic tension, and it’s fantastic. But for a show that stars Arnold freakin’ Schwarzenegger, the scale often feels restrained. Most combat takes place in narrow corridors, dark warehouses, or cramped living rooms.

You can tell the choreography is tight and the cast is committed, but the staging never feels quite big enough. There are no jaw-dropping set pieces, no chases that make your palms sweat. Which is a shame, because when FUBAR leans into its absurdity—Swedish mafia, puppet espionage, CIA bake sales—it’s genuinely unique. It just needs to trust itself more and go all in.

A Streamlined Future?

Despite its clutter, FUBAR still works. It’s fun. It’s fast. It’s full of strange, specific jokes that feel like they were written by a room full of sleep-deprived screenwriters who just watched True Lies and Brooklyn Nine-Nine back to back. And underneath it all, there is an earnest attempt to talk about generational trauma, parental expectations, and the weird ways people try to connect when everything around them is on fire.

But if Netflix gives us a Season 3 (and it probably will), the show needs to do what any good spy would do: trim the fat, pick a target, and go bigger. Or weirder. Or both.

Just don’t give Chips a podcast. That man should never be allowed near a microphone.

FUBAR Season 2 is an explosively entertaining mess—full of heart, jokes, and more plot threads than it can comfortably carry. It’s anchored by Schwarzenegger’s grizzled charm and Monica Barbaro’s steely charisma, with a supporting cast that occasionally threatens to steal the show (and sometimes just steal too much attention). The action could be bigger, the cast smaller, but the fun is undeniable. Still f***ed up beyond all recognition—and still worth watching.