The Sinner, an anthology mystery series, was a surprise hit for USA last year. But as the “why-dunit” drama prepares to debut its second season, potential pitfalls inevitably lurk. The first season exhausted the show’s source material, a novel by the same title—which could put it on shaky ground, like other recent adaptations that struggled in their second seasons when faced with generating extra story (The Handmaid’s Tale, 13 Reasons Why). And though last season’s star, Golden Globe nominee Jessica Biel, remains signed on as an executive producer, she will not return in an onscreen role.

As with any anthology series, this season will, for the most part, have to rely on its own merit to retain viewers’ fascination. The good news? In its first three episodes, The Sinner Season 2 does a more-than-capable job of following up its first season. In fact, if it continues on its current path, this season could be even stronger than the first.

In its first season, The Sinner spun a dark, lurid yarn about Cora Tannetti, a reticent mother-turned-murderer whom Biel played with shattered aplomb. In eight hour-long episodes, viewers, along with troubled detective Harry Ambrose (Bill Pullman), delved into Cora’s twisted past—all in the hopes of discovering what on earth motivated an otherwise peaceful woman to suddenly stab a man in plain view during a beach trip with her family. Season 2 shifts its lens to a much younger murder suspect: an 11-year-old boy named Julian (Elisha Henig), whose family trip to Niagara Falls comes to a gruesome halt when both his mother and father wind up dead—leaving him as the sole suspect. As in the first season, however, all is not what it seems.

With Biel receding behind the camera, this season needed a new star—and it found a stellar one in Carrie Coon, whom viewers might recognize from her impressive turns in The Leftovers and Fargo. (Tracy Letts, who happens to be Coon’s husband, also makes his entrance this season, although their characters do not interact onscreen—at least, not in the first three episodes.) Coon plays Vera, a resident from the same suspicious, reclusive commune as Julian and his family—and although she does not appear in the series premiere, her performance in the subsequent two episodes indicates that this season revolves around her just as much as it does Julian. Also, there’s a good chance that Vera and Julian’s home is actually a cult.

Pullman’s Harry Ambrose returns this season as the sole connective tissue to the series’s debut last year. His detective character remains fragile but perceptive, dealing with old trauma from his own past that surfaces when he returns to his hometown to help a green detective with Julian’s case. That freshman investigator, Heather, is played by Natalie Paul, fresh off of HBO’s The Deuce. Like Harry, Heather has some baggage of her own—but unlike Harry’s, Heather’s personal connection to the case, and the “commune” at its center, is a little more direct.

In its earlier episodes especially, The Sinner Season 1 sometimes seemed to be straining to attain its own idea of what a prestige mystery drama should look like. Although its latter episodes got to the point and solved the core mystery with an answer that was equal parts shocking and devastating, it would be hard to blame viewers who bailed midway through. Now that it’s left its original source material behind, however, The Sinner is able to operate entirely on its own creators’ instincts—and the show is better for that. Season 2 feels sure-footed to a degree that Season 1 only reached toward its end. Also, did I mention there might be a cult?

Drama fans, especially those who love a good murder mystery, would be well advised to give The Sinner Season 2 a chance. Even from the first three episodes, it’s clear there’s more afoot than meets the eye—and not solely in terms of plot. This chapter is fascinated with the assumptions we make about people based on appearances—and, once we get to know them, the things we presume to know about them based on their beliefs and where they come from. At all times on The Sinner, it’s unclear whom we can trust, and what the “truth” of these harrowing events really is. Also, seriously: who doesn’t love a good potential cult story?

The Sinner premieres August 1 at 10 P.M. on USA.