3 Body Problem has two more acts to go.
The Netflix drama about humanity’s struggle to unite in defiance of an alien invasion that’s zeroing-in on our world from light years away, has been renewed by the streamer for not one, but two more seasons—promising viewers a full conclusion to the survival struggle between cosmic civilizations.
Plans for more episodes were already underway, but a commitment to both a second and third chapter was announced by showrunners, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss and Alexander Woo at a for-your-consideration award season panel for the Television Academy on Friday evening.
3 Body Problem, which debuted in March, was the first return to large scale fantasy storytelling for Benioff and Weiss after concluding eight seasons of Game of Thrones for HBO. Woo joined the pair after serving as showrunner on 2019’s The Terror and working as a producer and writer on Manhattan and True Blood. The trio are currently working on scripts for seasons two and three of the invasion drama, based on the Remembrance of Earth’s Past series of novels by Cixin Liu.
“There are three books. There are three bodies. So we always thought three seasons made the most sense,” Weiss said. “We knew what more or less what we needed in terms of hours to tell the story the way we felt it needed to be told. And that’s what we’re going to do.”
“The very last page of Cixin Liu’s epic is one of the best last pages I’ve ever read, and it kind of destroyed me when I read it,” Benioff added. He said he and Weiss finished the last of the novels together on a flight from Osaka, Japan, to Los Angeles before committing to make the first season. “He came over to my seat and said, ‘We’re doing this, right?’ I said, ‘Yeah, we’re doin’ this.’ So, the idea that we get to go to that last page gives me great joy.”
The series favored heady philosophizing and existential hand-wringing rather than the explosions and action typical of alien attack stories, and the beings threatening the planet are never seen, communicating with inhabitants of Earth through digital simulations and inexplicable science-defying miracles. 3 Body Problem proved to be a slow burn, challenging viewers with its puzzling story but benefiting from strong word of mouth as the full scale of its story became clear. Forbes reported that the show “dominated the entire streaming industry at the end of March,” citing a Neilsen’s rating report that the show had been watched for a collective 1.79 billion minutes after only a month on the air.
Woo said it was four years of work from when they first joined forces to make the first season until its completion. He joked that the second season will be ready, “next month.”
While they don’t have firm dates to announce for when they’ll start filming and when the show might return to the air, Woo promised the second season completion “will go faster.”