The next season of the wildly popular podcast Serial will look at Army sergeant Bowe Bergdahl.
Maxim reports Serial host Sarah Koenig is currently working on two seasons of her podcast, and one of them will look at the U.S. soldier who left his position under “mysterious circumstances” in 2009.
Deadline adds that a team behind a film adaptation of Bowe’s story will work with Koenig to provide evidence and drive the new season of Serial forward.
Koenig has recently been spotted conducting research in the field for the This American Life spinoff. “Last week, a preliminary hearing for Bergdahl’s case was held at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, to determine if the former POW will be tried in a court-martial. According to someone present at the hearing, Serial host Sarah Koenig and at least one of the show’s producers were spotted in the courtroom,” according to Maxim.
As for the case itself, we’re not a government news site so we’ll leave the details to the experts: “Bergdahl was held prisoner by the Haqqani network, a Taliban-allied guerilla insurgent group, until he was released in exchange for five Guantanamo Bay detainees in May 2014,” writes Maxim. “Bergdahl claims that he was abducted by the insurgents after intentionally walking off his outpost. His goal, he says, was to cause a scene that would ultimately draw attention to conditions in his unit that he found troubling.
“However, this story contradicts accounts from multiple soldiers who served with Bergdahl in Afghanistan. They are convinced his reasons for leaving the outpost were far less honorable. Bergdahl was eventually charged with both desertion and misbehavior before the enemy, which carries a potential life sentence,” says Maxim.
Serial’s success came from its week-to-week storytelling and the deep level of detail Koenig and her team went into while investigating Adnan Syed. Her work was so good that Syed was granted an appeal shortly after season 1 wrapped up.
An air date for Serial season 2 is still unknown at this time. Given the popularity of Serial and the various mysteries surrounding Bowe’s case, it looks like the former soldier will be brought back into the spotlight in the near future.
You can get your own Bowe investigation started by watching this 2014 report from ABC News:
