There’s hope yet forMindhunterSeason 3 to happen… someday. Maybe. Potentially.
Fans were deflated when news broke last year that, after the release of the second season ofDavid Fincher’s Netflix serial killer series, the streaming service was releasing the actors from their contracts andputting the show on “indefinite hiatus.”Reports swirled that Fincher was exhausted by the production of Season 2 and wasn’t itching to spend another two years making Season 3 right away, and instead he made a new movie – the upcoming Netflix featureMank.
Last month, while promotingMank, Fincher said it didn’t make a ton of sense to move forward with a third season ofMindhunternoting that for the viewership it had, it was an expensive series. He seemed to suggest Netflix was open to continuing, but in a new interview withVarietyhe confirms that Season 2 pretty much wiped him out:
“I certainly needed some time away,” says Fincher. “We had all hands on deck to finish [season two] and we didn’t have a ton of scripts and a ton of outlines and a bible standing by for season three. I’ll admit I was a little bit like ‘I don’t know that I’m ready to spend another two years in the crawl space.'”
It’s important to note that whileMindhunterwas created byJoe Penhall, Fincher was essentially the showrunner of the series during Season 1 and Season 2. So when he wasn’t directing, he was still overseeing the series, and it took a lot out of him. Variety describes Season 2 as “a nightmare” to produce, noting that Fincher fired the original showrunner and tossed out eight scripts.
Courtenay Milesended up serving as the head writer on Season 2, spearheading a stellar season-long arc about the Atlanta Child Murders that also delved deeper into the interior life of FBI Agent Bill Tensch (Holt McCallany). It was a great, engrossing season with terrific performances from McCallany,Jonathan GroffandAnna Torvand exacting filmmaking, but it’s easy to understand from Fincher’s perspective how he might feel a little frustrated – movies are his passion, and each season ofMindhunterknocks off two years of his professional life.
However, in this new Variety interview, Fincher leaves the door open to revisitMindhunterin the future, going so far as to reveal that the overall plan for the series (which thus far has been primarily set in the 1970s and 80s) is to bring the action up to the 2000s:
“At some point I’d love to revisit it,” says Fincher. “The hope was to get all the way up to the late 90’s, early 2000’s, hopefully get all the way up to people knocking on the door at Dennis Rader’s house.”
Indeed, since the beginning of Season 1,Mindhunterhas had these little vignettes about Dennis Rader – aka the BTK Killer – who notoriously eluded authorities for decades. So it sounds like the endgame was for that to pay off in the final season.
As a huge fan of Fincher’s work andMindhunter, I don’t necessarily want to see whatMindhunterlooks like without his intense involvement, but I also want to see more David Fincher movies. So I understand the position he’s in, and hope that maybe in a few years he’ll feel like putting together maybe two final seasons shot back-to-back that bring the show to a close. Fingers crossed.
In the meantime,Mankis excellent and debuts on Netflix on December 4th.Read our review right here.
