Euphoria season 3 is finally coming, but new seasons of modern TV shows are taking years to make. We take a look at why.
The past couple of weeks has brought a lot of good news for fans of modern, prestige TV. Euphoria season 3 is finally heading into production next January and we’ll be getting the new season of Severance in the same month. Meanwhile, Stranger Things season 5 is now halfway through filming.
This would all be great news, except every one of these shows were last on TV three years ago, in 2022. The wait between seasons has stretched from roughly a year, maybe two, to several. It’ll be 2026 before we see a new season of Euphoria and by then, many of us will have largely forgotten what happened to Rue and her friends since the last time we saw them.
Why has the wait become so long?
Arguably, we’re in a new era of prestige TV. The qualitative gap between films and TV has somewhat closed and small screen productions are often just as expensive as movies are now. Actors will work fluidly in both formats, something that streaming has certainly helped with. You don’t necessarily graduate from TV shows to Hollywood anymore; you move back and forth between the two.
The late 2000s saw another boom in prestige TV as shows like Breaking Bad, Mad Men and Lost became not just popular entertainment, but cultural phenomena. Yet the seasons in each of these shows only took about a year to produce. Breaking Bad aired one season per year during its run from 2008 to 2015. Even something as ambitious (and expensive) as Game Of Thrones managed to get a season out every year. The biggest gap was between season 7 in 2017 and the final season in 2019.
Whereas Breaking Bad launched Bryan Cranston, already an established “TV star” into international stardom, many current movie stars are signing up for high-profile TV projects. Man of the moment Pedro Pascal, who will star in the upcoming Gladiator II as well as Marvel’s Fantastic Four adaptation, previously signed on to play Joel Miller in HBO’s The Last Of Us and Lucasfilm’s The Mandalorian.
The first season of The Last Of Us aired in early 2023 to rave reviews. The series was based on Naughty Dog’s gritty action-adventure game of the same name, and HBO quickly announced a second season for its now-acclaimed show. The new season will be based on Naughty Dog’s second game, The Last Of Us Part II, and writer-creator Craig Mazin has already said its story will take more than one season for them to tell.
The second season of The Last Of Us, which was delayed by the Hollywood strikes, began production in February 2024. If HBO does indeed renew The Last Of Us for more seasons, there’s no telling when we might see another, considering Pascal’s rather packed schedule. HBO has confirmed that the second season will make it to screens in 2025, leaving two years in-between the two seasons. Then again, that’s nothing compared to Euphoria.
Euphoria, which stars Zendaya, Sydney Sweeney, Jacob Elordi and Maude Apatow to mention a few, has been particularly delayed. There was even doubt as to whether Sam Levinson would be able to bring his acclaimed TV show back for another season because his principal cast is so busy. According to Variety, Levinson proposed a story for season three in late 2023 with a time jump of five years. Levinson also had to figure out a way around Angus Cloud’s character Fezco after the actor tragically died in July 2023.
Perhaps the most puzzling show of these is AppleTV+’s Severance. The first season of the mind-boggling drama began its run in early 2022 but the second season won’t air until January 2025. Unlike Euphoria and The Last Of Us, Severance doesn’t include any megastars. Sure, Adam Scott, Patricia Arquette and John Turturro are all excellent actors and very famous, but perhaps not in as high demand as Zendaya or Pedro Pascal.
Unlike The Last Of Us or Stranger Things, Severance includes less extravagant CGI and limited sets, although this might very well change in the new season as we return to Lumon Industries and the mystery around the titular procedure which separates your memories from your work self.
The Hollywood strikes are naturally part of the reason why it’s taken so long for all these excellent TV shows to make it back to our screens. Lasting from May to November 2023, the entire industry was put on hold as the writers’ and actors’ unions fought for better rights and more transparency in their lines of work. Naturally, it’s had an impact on the industry’s output and it seems that the effect is particularly strong on TV, which has always relied on quick turnarounds between seasons.
But even if we factor in the delays caused by the strikes and the aftermath of the pandemic, the wait times are still bordering on ridiculous. We also rarely get 22-episode seasons anymore – Grey’s Anatomy is one of the few shows still managing to do longer seasons and airing them roughly once a year – but everything seems to be a limited series now, consisting of 10 episodes or less.
Will this ever change? Probably not. With streaming becoming the biggest way for us to consume TV, it’s a constant battle of who has the biggest stars and most ambitious productions, which leads to long wait times in between seasons. The quality of modern TV is probably the highest it’s ever been, but it also requires unprecedented amounts of patience.
Now, excuse us while we go read in-depth episode recaps of Severance in preparation for the new season.
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