If you’ve just finished Amazon Prime Video’s peppy confection The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel season 2, there’s some good news: It’s already been renewed for a third season.
The zippy Emmy-winner will return in time for a holiday-binge — if you can hold off that long. If not, just pop on your coziest PJs the first weekend in December. Midge Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan) will return to our TV screens: December 6, 2019.
The trailer for the third season shows us that we can expect more travel as Maisel goes on an international tour, more of the gorgeous costumes and beauty looks we've come to adore, and even a guest appearance from a Gilmore Girls favorite — though it's not the one we were expecting.
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Although Amazon allowed fans to sample the pilot in March 2017 — which led to a full eight-episode season order — the series didn’t premiere in its entirety until the last week of November 2017. Then Maisel’s sophomore run debuted just over one year later during the first week of December 2018. Clearly Amazon likes to see its Amy Sherman-Palladino-supplied crown jewel dominate the short period of time when much of Maisel’s would-be linear TV competition is on winter hiatus.
Now that we know roughly when to expect Midge’s staccato comedy to come back, we can start to figure out what her heralded return will actually look like. Season 2 finale “All Alone” begins to set the stage for a top-of-her-game — but, as the episode title suggests, all alone — Midge. After seeing Lenny Bruce (Luke Kirby, Maisel’s most underused asset) perform “All Alone” on a late-night show, something the real-life Lenny Bruce did, Midge realizes the loneliness that often comes with success is waiting in her future. After all, the comedian agreed to go on a six-month European tour with proto-Bruno Mars superstar Shy Baldwin (Leroy McClain) without even remembering her almost-fiancé Benjamin (Zachary Levi) exists. This is not a woman focusing on romantic relationships.
“[By deciding to tour with Shy], she picked a path that is exciting and ambitious. She will travel, she’ll fuck great men, she’ll have ups and downs and make money and lose money,” creator Sherman-Palladino told TVLine.com, previewing Midge’s next adventure. While it’s exciting to know the stand-up will be bedding men who may actually be worthy of her marvelousness, Sherman-Palladino does predict Midge’s new life won’t be all sunshine and rainbows.
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“At the end of the day, that will seem like a more exciting life, but it may not be the life that will make her as happy and safe and protected as the other life,” the writer added. “And that is the journey that this woman is taking.”
That’s why even Benjamin’s portrayer, Zachary Levi, doesn’t sound like he’s expecting to return. “If there's an opportunity to come back and wrap that storyline up, I would love to,” the actor told The Hollywood Reporter in December 2018. “But a lot of stories can be told just in dialogue from other characters.” Midge’s “All Alone”-ending “dialogue” about being alone, and her hookup with ex-husband Joel Maisel (Michael Zegen), certainly suggest she’s already let go of Benjamin.
Sherman-Pallaindo also signaled we’ve seen the last of Ben, telling TVLine, “[The season] all led to that moment when she said ‘Yes’ [to touring for six months with Shy], without a thought of the fact that she has just thrown everything else away. To do that, you can’t really have a [Midge-Benjamin] breakup scene.”
With Midge’s professional, romantic, and sexual future sorted out, the only question left is how she will handle being both a mom and an internationally touring comedian. Sherman-Palladino’s husband and creative partner Danielle Palladino teased Maisel will grapple with that mystery. “We will be dealing with that [in Season 3],” he promised during the TVLine interview.
Considering Ethan (twins Matteo and Matteo Pascale) and baby Esther basically disappear from their parents' world by the end of season 2, that might be the best news we have about Maisel 3.0.