‘Mindhunter’ Season 3: Has Netflix Renewed or Canceled?

Mindhunter – Picture: Netflix

One of the shows we’re asked about is Mindhunter and whether or not it’ll ever return for a season 3 on Netflix. The cast and crew have all been pretty vocal about it coming back at some point, while Netflix hasn’t officially commented on the matter. David Fincher, the man behind the show, has repeatedly reiterated and implied that the show is improbable to return. Here’s the lowdown on what we know about Mindhunter season 3 according to all the available information in the wild as of 2023. 

In case you didn’t know, Mindhunter is one of the best shows on Netflix and follows two FBI agents who open up a new unit within the Bureau to study some of the most notorious killers in history. For a full recap of the events of season 2, check out our guide here.

Mindhunter Season 3 Was on Indefinite Hold Until 2023

Five seasons of the show were initially set out at the show’s inception. Still, due to the nature of the show having a big budget and viewership apparently not hitting the right marks, the show was put on “indefinite hold” with the cast released from their contracts, allowing them to pursue other jobs.

This news came back in January 2020 with Netflix telling Vulture:

“David is focused on directing his first Netflix film Mank and on producing the second season of Love, Death and Robots. He may revisit Mindhunter again in the future, but in the meantime felt it wasn’t fair to the actors to hold them from seeking other work while he was exploring new work of his own.”

Mindhunter – Picture: Netflix

In late 2020, Fincher reiterated that the show was on hold, once again to Vulture, saying:

“Listen, for the viewership that it had, it was a very 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 two. And on some level, you have to be realistic — dollars have to equal eyeballs.”

There have been hints that the show could be returning recently, with some sites saying scripts have been worked on and the show is still very much still “in the cards,” but that’s mostly hearsay for now.

In 2023, Fincher spoke to the French outlet Le Journal du Dimanche he was directly asked whether there will be a sequel to Mindhunter, to which he responded (translated to English via Google Translate):

“I’m very proud of the first two seasons. But it’s a particularly expensive show and, in the eyes of Netflix, we haven’t attracted a large enough audience to justify such an investment. I don’t blame them, they took risks to launch the series, gave me the means to do as I dreamed Mank [his black and white film on Hollywood in the 1930s] and they allowed me to venture on new paths with The Killer. It’s a great opportunity to be able to work with people capable of audacity. The day when our desires will no longer be the same, we will have to be honest to separate.”

Oddly, Netflix’s French Twitter account found it reasonable to make an intervention on various outlets snipping up this answer by including the full quote.

Why they found this necessary is unclear, we can think of two reasons. One, the series may come back in some form eventually, or two (and the more likely case) they wanted to include the bits where Fincher praised Netflix instead of just talking about the cold reality of the numbers for the series.

Le passage en entier : pic.twitter.com/4Q0VZgo6Rw

— Netflix France (@NetflixFR) February 20, 2023

What the Cast Has Said About Season 3 of Mindhunter

The cast has been particularly vocal about the return of the show eventually. Let’s dive into what they’ve had to say:

Jonathan Groff in Mindhunter

Around the time of The Matrix 4 release in late 2021, Jonathan Groff (who played Agent Smith in the sequel) spoke to THR and touched on the future of Mindhunter.

He referred to the decision of putting the show on hold as being akin to Chicago Bulls general manager Jerry Krause made regarding 1997-1998, whereby it’d give the team some time to rebuild before coming out swinging again.

Groff later added: “The minute he says he wants to do another one, I’ll be there in a second. But I trust his vision and his instincts, and so I leave it always in his hands, as ever.”

Holt McCallany in Mindhunter – Picture: Netflix

Holt McCallany has been pretty vocal on the show’s future too regularly Tweeting out any article covering the show’s potential future.

McCallany featured on the KFC Radio podcast back in May 2021 saying he’d say “Yes immediately” should the opportunity ever come back up but ultimately said it’s up to David Fincher.

He notably said something similar in an interview with GoldDerby in the summer of 2020, where he said that he’s “optimistic that there can be another season,” adding, “I think it’s not too late for us to come back, so my hope is that we haven’t seen the last of Bill Tench and Holden Ford … I’m keeping my fingers crossed.”

Me too.

— Holt McCallany (@HoltMcCallany) January 27, 2021

The most recent Tweet from Holt on the subject came in late April 2022 with a simple shrug to a fan asking about the future of the show.

🤷‍♂️

— Holt McCallany (@HoltMcCallany) April 27, 2022

What would Mindhunter season 3 be about on Netflix?

One of the series directors recently dished to Collider and briefly outlined what season 3 of Mindhunter was initially planned to be about.

Andrew Dominik, who directed season 2 of the show, states that season 3 had higher ambitions than the previous two seasons and would be taking to Hollywood.

“What they were going to do with Season 3 was they were going to go [to] Hollywood. So one of them was going to be hooking up with Jonathan Demme and the other one was going to be hooking up with Michael Mann. And it was all going to be about profiling making it into the sort of zeitgeist, the public consciousness. It would’ve been… That was the season everyone was really waiting for to do, with when they sort of get out of the basement and start.”

What’s David Fincher working on next for Netflix?

Netflix notably signed a four-year exclusive movie and TV deal announced in late 2020, so there’s plenty more to come.

Throughout late 2021 and early 2022, Fincher was filming his first major feature film for Netflix in the form of the comic-book adaptation of The Killer, bound for Netflix in November 2023.

The Killer – Picture: Instagram

Beyond The Killer, we don’t really know what’s next on the docket for Fincher. One of the projects previously announced at Netflix was a TV movie prequel to Chinatown from 1974, with Robert Towne producing the script.

Until then, you can also find some other David Fincher movies on Netflix US, which we’ve listed here which, includes the Oscar-winning Mank, Love, Death and Robots (which returns for Volume 3 in May 2022), the docu-series Voir where he served as an executive producer and House of Cards where he also served as an executive producer.

So, in conclusion, it continues to look like Mindhunter’s future on Netflix remains unclear.

Do you wish Mindhunter would return for a Season 3 on Netflix? Let us know in the comments down below.