The latest season of Jeopardy! kicked off on September 11, with Ken Jennings hosting a heavily adjusted lineup of new episodes that has incorporated previously used clues, due to the WGA writers strike making it impossible for the Clue Crew to return to duty. But that isn’t the case for the upcoming second season of Celebrity Jeopardy!, which was confirmed to have been finalized before the strike began. And now we finally know who will be showing off their mental skills in primetime, which includes Law & Order: Organized Crime’s Christopher Meloni and Chicago Med star Steven Weber, so you KNOW we’re hoping to see those two in a head-to-head battle for Dick Wolf TV drama supremacy.
ABC unveiled a first look at Celebrity Jeopardy!’s Season 2 premiere, which will feature a trio of highly recognizable TV stars who aren’t part of NBC’s primetime franchise lineups. So at this time, it’s not clear yet whether or not Meloni and Weber will be duking it out in the same Quarterfinals match-up, though they could obviously still face off in a semi-final or final round, assuming both have the mental dexterity to crush the competition.
Speaking of, here’s the full list of currently announced stars, per EW, though more of the second season’s famous faces will be revealed at a later date.
- Christopher Meloni (Law & Order: Organized Crime)
- Steven Weber (Chicago Med)
- Mark Duplass (The Morning Show)
- Emily Hampshire (Schitt’s Creek)
- Utkarsh Ambudkar (Ghosts)
- Dulé Hill (The Wonder Years)
- Mira Sorvino (Shining Vale)
- Timothy Simons (Veep)
- Katie Nolan (Speed Round)
- Lisa Ann Walter (Abbott Elementary)
- Sherry Shepard (Sherri)
Weirdly enough, that only amounts to 11 contestants, so not even an even breakdown between four games. The new season of Celebrity Jeopardy! will have 27 total contestants vying to win big money for their respective charities, so we can look forward to learning about another 16 stars that are yet to be revealed. Obviously we’re hoping for Mariska Hargitay and Ice T to enter the mix, as well as one or more stars from Dick Wolf’s FBI universe on CBS. Not that Chicago P.D. and Chicago Fire should go unrepresented, but I guess there are only so may slots to go around.
The season premiere will feature contestants Mark Duplass, Emily Hampshire, and Utkarsh Ambudkar battling for trivia supremacy, but fans can check out first looks at many of the above-mentioned stars in the first trailer below.
Still can’t quite tell if Chris Meloni and Steven Weber will be up against each other, but now I’m interested in seeing Dulé Hill dancing his way all over the Celebrity Jeopardy! stage. If I can paraphrase the great President Jed Bartlet: “The only thing you ever had to do to make me happy was made Ken Jennings laugh at the end of the day.”
Celebrity Jeopardy! Season 2 will debut on ABC on Wednesday, September 27, at 8:00 p.m. ET, with episodes available to stream the next day with a Hulu subscription. And it’s the closest anyone is going to get to future seasons of Law & Order: Organized Crime and Chicago Med for the near future, as new episodes aren’t coming until 2024,