Space Force has struck well with its second season after getting off to a rough start. Reuniting Steve Carell with The Office showrunner Greg Daniels, the series follows the sixth branch of the United States Armed Forces known as the Space Force. It premiered in 2020 and was met with reviews that were less than stellar, but Netflix committed to the series by ordering a second season. Fortunately, that has turned out to be much more well-received.

Over at Rotten Tomatoes, season 2 is currently ranked at a perfect 100% fresh score on the Tomatometer. Compared to season 1's paltry 39% score, that shows tremendous improvement in the series. This is not unlike what happened when Carell and Daniels launched the American version of The Office, which struggled to find its way with its first season only to become one of the most popular comedy shows of all time. Perhaps that was enough to convince Netflix to give Space Force another shot.

"This time I laughed with every episode...fun, entertaining, with a variety of absurd moments, taking advantage of its cast to squeeze as much as possible out of each scene," notes QiiBO's Jorge Rivera Rubio.

Comic Years' Shah Shahid adds, "With interesting characters and dynamic relationships, season 2 works a lot better than its first. So for fans of Carrell and his other comedies, its definitely a must-watch."

"Space Force season 2 is exactly what it needs to be this time around, which amounts to a gut-busting, laugh-out-loud workplace comedy," ComicBook.com's Adam Barnhardt puts it. "Carell shines exceptionally bright this season as does the rest of the ensemble."

Related: Netflix Beats the U.S. Military to Space Force Trademark

Space Force Made Some Changes for Season 2

Space Force 2
Netflix

In a previous interview with Collider, series co-creator Greg Daniels said how the problem with season 1 might have been that they were trying to make the show too "cinematic." There were some changes made to the second season with the goal of making the series much more entertaining. Given the positive response from the professional critics, it would seem that this strategy has turned out to be successful.

"The thing that Steve is so brilliant at and was used to from The Office is the ability to kind of improvise with the other actors," Daniels said. "Afterwards, we looked at what we had to work with, and we were like, 'Well, the cast is amazing. The cast that we've assembled for Space Force, it's a shame to make them just shoot one side and then wait and relight,' as opposed to like having a more flexible shooting pattern where they can play off each other and have fun with it and improvise.”

He added, “The other big creative change we did was we brought in the guy who directed the pilot of The Office and a lot of our biggest episodes, this guy Ken Kwapis, and he's so much about protecting the performance energy on the set for the cast so that they can relax and not worry about the mechanics of shooting it. He's also super good at shooting comedy, which is somewhat different than the sort of like Kubrick-y kind of thing we were going for season 1, right? We saw what was working and we tried to fix it.”

Space Force season 2 is now streaming on Netflix.