A new season of My Life with the Walter Boys means a fresh start, right? That’s, at least, what Jackie Howard (Nikki Rodriguez) is hoping for.

Season 1 ended with Jackie on a plane bound for New York City, leaving her life — and her two lover boys, Alex (Ashby Gentry) and Cole (Noah LaLonde) Walter — behind in Silver Falls, Colorado. In a daze of swirling feelings, she took off right after her boyfriend, Alex drunkenly said he loved her … and she secretly kissed Cole in the barn in the finale. “Jackie leaves because she’s a little overwhelmed and doesn’t know if she really fits in or belongs in Colorado,” Rodriguez tells Tudum. Feeling like she made a lot of mistakes, Jackie’s at a loss. She can’t help but think she’s done more harm than good for the family that took her in. “She tries to run away from her problems,” the actor says.

But running away won’t do for the matriarch of the Walter family, Jackie’s late mother’s longtime best friend, Katherine (Sarah Rafferty). When Jackie returns to her uncle Richard’s (Alex Quijano) apartment on the last day of her summer internship in the Big Apple, Katherine shows up in the lobby, ready for answers — and to check on her girl. “She’s a matriarch in all the ways of that word,” says Rafferty. “She’s driven by offering all those children and everybody she loves and knows a feeling of belonging.”

Watch their reunion in the first eight minutes of My Life with the Walter Boys Season 2 now. Then read on below for more insights from the cast and creator Melanie Halsall about where we pick up with the Walter family in the upcoming episodes.

Who brings Jackie back to Silver Falls in My Life with the Walter Boys Season 2? 

If you thought her burgeoning romances with Alex and Cole were going to bring Jackie back to Colorado, we hate to disappoint. Halsall says it was always going to be her bond with Katherine that drew her back to Silver Falls. “Katherine and Jackie have such a deep connection that it couldn’t have been anyone else,” she says. “The conversation they have as Katherine is persuading her is really deep and emotionally touching and sincere. Jackie is ultimately looking for a family, for a mother, and Katherine represents all that — romance aside.”

Apart from her uncle Richard, Katherine is also the only other person in Jackie’s life who really knew her mom, Angelica. And that connection proves to be a compelling reason to return. Katherine brings Jackie to the diner where she and Angelica would hash out all their problems over “butter and chocolate and talking”; and this gesture strikes a chord with Jackie, who’s been feeling alone in NYC. “It’s such a big deal,” says Rodriguez. “I really love their scenes together and working with Sarah.” 

Katherine reminds Jackie that she still has a home somewhere, that the Walters want her to come home to them. “She comes back, because when she goes to New York, she realizes that she’s just not the same person that she was before she came to Colorado for the first time, and that maybe she doesn’t really belong in New York anymore, at least at this point in her life,” says Rodriguez.

Where does Jackie stand with Alex and Cole in My Life with the Walter Boys Season 2?

Jackie’s realization and her return doesn’t spell the end of everyone’s troubles. She goes back to Silver Falls to find the same ranch, but a new Alex. Back from a summer at cowboy camp in Montana, “the old Alex is pretty much gone,” Gentry says of his character, “and I don’t know if he's coming back.” To Gentry, that means out with “sweet, innocent, lover, poetic Alex of Season 1,” and in with “rodeo, popular, attractive, confident Alex of Season 2.” The actor says “he comes back in resentment — and almost in opposition to Jackie.”

Meanwhile, LaLonde tells Tudum that Cole has been waiting for a long-overdue conversation. “There’s this part of him that wasn’t even necessarily conscious of it, but was [harboring] a silent hope that they both had an understanding that there would be a way to make everything right … To answer questions like, ‘Why did you leave? How do we move forward with Alex?’. And that they could move forward in the way they felt that things should be.”

The glances exchanged between Jackie, Alex, and Cole at the end of the clip reveal that there are a lot of things that have been left unsaid. “There's a certain tension between everyone, but especially Cole and Jackie, and Cole and Alex,” says LaLonde. “There’s a feeling that something went on.”

See how the love triangle unfolds when My Life with the Walter Boys Season 2 premieres Aug. 28, only on Netflix.

Watch the 'My Life With the Walter Boys' Season 2 Trailer