Here’s Why ‘Mindhunter’ Season 3 Isn’t Happening at Netflix

Mindhunter is officially over, according to the Netflix series executive producer David Fincher. Although it hasn’t been formally announced as canceled by the streamer, Fincher recently explained in an interview that there won’t be a third season.

“I’m very proud of the first two seasons. But it’s a very expensive show and, in the eyes of Netflix, we didn’t attract enough of an audience to justify such an investment [for Season 3],” Fincher told French outlet Le Journal du Dimanche. “I don’t blame them; they took risks to get the show off the ground… It’s a blessing to be able to work with people who are capable of boldness. The day our desires are not the same, we have to be honest about parting ways.”

Shortly after the second season in 2019, primary cast members Jonathan Groff, Holt McCallany, and Anna Torv were released from their contracts. Initially, it was due to Fincher’s busy schedule. “He may revisit Mindhunter again in the future,” a rep for the streamer told TVline in January 2020. “But, in the meantime, [he] felt it wasn’t fair to the actors to hold them from seeking other work while he was exploring new work of his own.”

Later that same year, Fincher provided an update on a Season 3 in an interview with Vulture, stating, “Listen, for the viewership that it had, it was an expensive show. We talked about, ‘Finish Mank and then see how you feel,’ but I honestly don’t think we’re going to be able to do it for less than I did Season 2. And on some level, you have to be realistic about dollars have to equal eyeballs.”

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In the same interview, he revealed that it was a three-year process for working on Seasons 1 and 2, the latter of which premiered on Netflix in August 2016. “It’s a 90-hour workweek. It absorbs everything in your life. When I got done, I was pretty exhausted, and I said, ‘I don’t know if I have it in me right now to break season three.’”

The series followed FBI Agents Holden Ford (Groff) and Bill Tench (McCallany), who applied behavioral analysis with the help of psychologist Wendy Carr (Torv) to hunt notorious serial killers.