Vida Boss Says Season 1 Is "Just the Beginning" and Shares Hopes for Season 2

Vidaended its six-episode first season at a crossroads on Sunday night and only at the beginning of its journey, according to the show's creator and showrunner Tanya Saracho.

"[Season 1] is sort of like a prologue in a way, like a three-hour pilot that you saw," Saracho tells TV Guide. "It feels like, now, at the end of [Episode 6] is the beginning. Now we can start. We introduce the characters, and just who they are, and we introduce the world, and that took three hours... Now, we begin."

The series is Starz's compelling deep-dive into the Latinx community of East Los Angeles and concluded the first arc with estranged sisters Emma (Mishel Prada) and Lyn (Melissa Barrera) deciding to stay in town to save their deceased mother's bar and protect the tenants living in the apartment building the sisters inherited. If Starz greenlights a Season 2, the sisters will try to make ends meet while also taking care of their mother's widow Eddie (Ser Anzoategui), who was beaten almost to death for being a lesbian hanging out at the wrong bar with the wrong kind of people.

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The intersection of the queer community with the Latinx population of East L.A. is something Saracho wants to explore in Season 2. When Emma and Lyn's mother, Vida, ran the bar it was a safe haven for the queer populous of the neighborhood. Even though Emma belongs to that community, branding the bar in that way runs contrary to her ideas of how to run a successful business.

"That'll be a conversation between [Emma and Eddie], hopefully next season. That has to be a big thing, so it will be very important as a conversation," Saracho says. "Obviously there's a resistance from Emma... Lesbian bars don't last. They don't stay open, you know? Gay bars do. Not lesbian bars. [In] her business mind, it's not a very smart way to brand the bar. But also, she's queer, so what are you doing? That's good character conflict."

As Emma continues to grapple with her sexual identity in the place where she was raised to oppress it, Lyn also has more growing up to do in the proposed Season 2. The younger of the siblings spent the majority of Vida Season 1 self-destructing, home wrecking a happy engagement on her path to self-discovery. She was spiritually cleansed in the penultimate episode, but seeing the light also forced Lyn to really look at the mess she had created in her life and dealing with that will be a huge part of her future arc.

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"Righteousness and morality are poking at her, and she's like 'I don't wanna hear, I don't wanna hear.' ...Now she's gonna have to suffer through this goodness. That's how we would start, if we get a second season," Saracho explains. "We would start it like, 'Oh f--k, what does this mean to be set right?' and the sacrifices that entails because she has used men a certain way all her life. She's used herself in relation to men a certain way. If she finds her next Juniper she would have a great life, but that's not the right thing to do. We will see with her."

There's a lot more road for these women to travel and Saracho hopes if Starz moves forward with the series she can add a few more episodes to Season 2, ideally four more to be exact. As the show progresses she wants the viewers to see that the Latinx community she's depicting mirrors so much of what's going on in their own homes.

"I'm just hoping they're compelled by this world, and realize the similarities and the humanity that is very similar, especially if you're not a Latinx," she shares. "It would be great if you identified with just family, just loss of a parent, then see, 'Oh, wait, we're not so different. It's not like this marginalized community. Oh, it looks just like my community.'"

Vida is now available on Starz.