3 Body Problem showrunners address confusing Netflix renewal announcement, and now I'm nervous

Earlier this month, Netflix renewed its brainy sci-fi drama 3 Body Problem for additional episodes in order to conclude the story laid out in the Hugo award-winning Remembrance of Earth's Past novel series by Chinese author Liu Cixin. Adapted for television by Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss, along with True Blood writer and executive producer Alexander Woo, 3 Body Problem is a complex story about an alien invasion that spans centuries and features some absolutely mind-bending concepts. The first season was a hit for Netflix that won over a lot of viewers, so it was great to see it get renewed.

But what exactly does "additional episodes" mean? Are we getting multiple seasons? One season released in multiple parts? Something else? Benioff, Weiss and Woo's statement at the time didn't clarify things, simply saying that they were “thrilled that we get to tell this story through to its epic conclusion."

We now know a little bit more, thanks to a report from The Hollywood Reporter about the showrunners' recent appearance at a Netflix upfronts presentation. THR says that Benioff, Weiss and Woo put emphasis on there being more "seasons" ahead, plural, confirming that more than one is in the works. They didn't go into details about exact episode counts, but still, it's more than we knew before and that's nice.

“We knew going into this how many hours we need to tell the rest of the story because we’ve got a roadmap through to the end,” Weiss told THR. “And we have what we need to get to the end as intended from when we started.”

“By the time we finish with the show, it will be seven years we’ve devoted to it,” Benioff added. “We’re now at a place where we get to tell the rest of the story, and, yes, we have enough time to tell the rest of the story the way we want to and that’s immensely gratifying.”

That seven-year time frame that Benioff mentions is interesting. The Hollywood Reporter breaks down how long the duo have been working on the series already — about four years, to crack the show and get its first season out. That leaves roughly three years to finish up whatever they've got planned for adapting Liu's second and third novels, The Dark Forest and Death's End. That strikes me as kind of fast, considering that those books are much larger than The Three-Body Problem and many television networks have been favoring two-year gaps between seasons of their big budget genre shows.

For the love of god, 3 Body Problem, don't repeat the biggest mistake of Game of Thrones

Again, this is good news. It's always nice to get clarification! But I'd also be lying if I said that Weiss and Benioff's clearly delineated timelines didn't make me nervous. Benioff says that they've had a "roadmap to the end" since they started working on the series, and know exactly how many hours they need to tell the story right. That sounds eerily similar to what they said about Game of Thrones for many years, claiming they had a plan for roughly seven seasons of the series as early as 2014, five years before Thrones ended. (And in reality, that seven-season plan goes back even farther, to when HBO first acquired the rights to George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire.) That final season would eventually be split into two parts, which were covered in Game of Thrones seasons 7 and 8.

The ending of Game of Thrones is one of the most famously divisive endings in television history. The fanbase turned against Benioff and Weiss so hard that to this day if you Google search "bad writers" they still come up as some of the very first results. We can dissect how Thrones erred forever, but to me the biggest issue has always been that the production was dead set on wrapping in a given number of episodes and seasons, regardless of whether that meant condensing important story moments to the point where they didn't work as well. Never mind that author George R.R. Martin pushed for more seasons and HBO would have gladly given Thrones a longer run.

All this is to say, it's great that Benioff, Weiss and Woo have a plan for exactly how long they think 3 Body Problem will be, but I desperately hope they don't stick to it too rigidly if it turns out the story needs something else in order to be maximally effective. We've been down this road of heartache before, and there's no reason for a repeat. I remain cautiously optimistic after how good 3 Body Problem's first season was, but only time will tell where the series goes from here.

All eight episodes of 3 Body Problem season 1 are available to stream on Netflix. Season 2 has yet to enter production; I expect we'll be watching it sometime in 2026.

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