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New Season of 'Serial' Focuses on the Story of Bowe Bergdahl

By Jonathan R. Tung, Esq. on December 13, 2015 | Last updated on March 21, 2019

The wildly popular podcast Serial closed last year focusing on the story of Adnan Syed, the suburbanite convicted of murdering his girlfriend in 1999. The podcast has been credited for shining a light on some of the real inner workings of lawyers, with emphasis on the criminal justice system.

If you loved the first season of Serial, here's an overview of what's to come.

Bowe Bergdahl

In the new season, Maxim reports that the show will focus on Bowe Bergdahl. For those who haven't been listening to public radio much, Bowe Bergdahl was the U.S. soldier who either left or was abducted into the Afghani night under highly contested and mysterious circumstances back in 2009.

The soldier was held prisoner by Taliban allies, until he was exchanged later for several Gitmo detainees in 2014. Bergdahl claims abduction after he intentionally left his post in a somewhat unorthodox bid to draw attention to what he claimed were the poor conditions of his unit. This too was first reported by Matthew Farwell and Michael Hastings back in 2012. Soldiers who "rescued" Bergdahl aren't convinced of his story. They claim that he deserted his unit and have called him everything from "coward" to "traitor".

Sara Keonig, the producer of the first season of Serial is back again for more action and will apply her brand of investigative style journalism to the Bergdahl case, no doubt delighting pod-cast listeners everywhere. The previous season closed with Adnan Syed still serving his life sentence for the murder of then girlfriend, Hae Min Lee.

Keonig's presence even has the potential of making the audience a part of the legal drama pretty much as it happens, very much in the style of the first season. Getting that kind of legal material is not easy work. But the fact that it get collected, edited, sorted, organized and to print is something that is a bit of a boon to lawyers. I mean, who really knows what lawyers have to go through? (Besides lawyers, of course.)

But journalism is about maintaining objectivity. When Maxim got in contact with two members who served with Bergdahl, they expressed doubts that Koenig could present the story without some bias. "[M]y concern is that the truth is being diluted by those looking to gain from Bowe's story," one of them said.

Truth or not, no one is taking any bets against the new season making waves.

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