'The Serpent Queen' Season 2 Puts Catherine de Medici & Elizabeth I Side by Side

The bitch, as they say, is back. Well, almost. Starz has released a first look at the upcoming second season of its biting period drama The Serpent Queen, and if the lush costumes and sprawling cast are any indication, we're all in for an excellent time this summer.

The series aims to tell the story of the (in)famous French queen Catherine de Medici, a complicated and largely misunderstood woman who was the mother of three kings and is predominantly remembered by history as a dark and sinister figure. Her interest in the occult, her friendships with questionable figures like the seer Nostradamus, and her supposed love of poisoning her enemies led her to be branded as everything from a murderer to a literal witch, and while it's highly unlikely she committed even a fraction of the acts she stands accused of, well. History's never been all that kind of the memory of powerful women, has it?

The Serpent Queen stars Samantha Morton (The Burning Girls) as Catherine, and the series' first season chronicled her early life, from her arrival in France at the age of fourteen to her wedding to the second son of the French king and the realization that her new husband already had a much-older mistress. The Season 1 finale saw the events of the story Catherine had been telling about her origins (in flashback form) catch up to the events of the life she is currently living, just as her second son is about to be crowned King Charles IX.  We don't know much yet about what Season 2 of The Serpent Queen will look like, but there are plenty of dark historical events and difficult choices in Catherine's future for the show to explore.