Tina Fey has finally returned to TV in The Four Seasons, a Netflix series based on the 1981 Alan Alda film, which she co-created with her longtime collaborators Tracey Wigfield and Lang Fisher. Fey stars alongside heavyweights like Steve Carell, Will Forte, and Colman Domingo in an ensemble cast that follows six old friends on quarterly meet-ups as they deal with the shocking news that one couple is breaking up.
If you’ve binged all eight episodes of the first season that are streaming now, here’s what we know about a second season.
Will there be a season 2 of The Four Seasons?
Yes! Per Variety, Netflix has officially announced a second season. It’ll have eight episodes, just like the first one.
“We are so grateful that audiences worldwide share our love of cozy sweaters, drinks by the ocean, and picking fights in a hot tub,” said co-creators Fey, Fisher, and Wigfield. “See you on our next vacation together!”
What would be the plot of The Four Seasons season 2?
Spoilers ahead for season 1 of The Four Seasons.
Season 1 of the limited series ends in both tragedy and uplift: After Steve Carrell’s Nick dies in a tragic car accident on New Year’s Eve, his ex-wife Anne (Kerri Kenney) extends an olive branch and invites his pregnant girlfriend Ginny (Erika Henningsen) into their found family. This plot significantly deviates from the original film (Nick survived and impregnated his younger girlfriend, so Anne’s acceptance isn’t a plot point), though the rest of the series covers the same ground as Alda’s film. If Netflix orders and Fey agrees to more episodes, season 2 would undoubtedly center on the relationship between Ginny and Anne as they navigate the arrival of Nick’s child and aim to forge a path forward without him.
The other two marriages of the series were also significant in season 1. Fey and Forte’s characters Kate and Jack entered counseling in the last quarter of the first season and end the finale still together, while Domingo’s Danny and his on-screen husband Claude’s (played by Marco Calvani) relationship expands with a threesome after fights over Danny’s lack of attention to his health. There’s plenty more relationship-based plot that can be mined for season 2 plots, alongside their ongoing grief over Nick’s death.
Who would be in the cast of The Four Seasons season 2?
It’s expected that the characters still alive at the end of the first season will return: Tina Fey’s Kate, Will Forte’s Jack, Colman Domingo’s Danny, Marco Calvani’s Claude, Kerry Kinney’s Anne, and Erika Henningsen’s Ginny. While Steve Carell’s Nick died, there’s always the opportunity for characters to recur in flashbacks.
When asked if she would bring Carell back, Fey said, “I couldn’t possibly say. We have our format. I mean, of the many mistakes I’ve made in my career, killing him will hopefully go down as the biggest.”
Season 2 would also provide an opportunity to expand the cast or provide more background to existing characters (like Kate and Jack’s daughter Beth and Nick and Anne’s daughter Lila, who are at school together and have clearly had some sort of falling out). If the writers implement a time jump, The Four Seasons could choose to follow a story arc related to Nick and Ginny’s as-yet unborn child.
What else has Tina Fey said about season 2?
In a new interview with Deadline, Fey shared that she has already started her writer’s room for season 2. “We have the full staff back from Season 1,” she told the outlet. “We’ve been in for about a month, and everyone continues to be very generous with sharing their own experiences. We talked a lot about season 1, how we felt about it, how we felt it was perceived. I don’t think I’ve ever been a part of anything—except maybe moments on Saturday Night Live—that was watched by so many people, so quickly. And so it was thrilling to have that feedback. All of us had friends who were like you said, ‘I wanted to smack Jack; I wanted to throttle Nick.’ I love that people have visceral reactions. And so now we’re figuring out, OK, without the template of the original movie, what can happen that still feels in scale and realistic, but also entertaining. So it’s coming along.”
She also revealed that the format for season 2 will be the same as the first. “One of the things we like about it is what we kept calling the container plate of it,” she said. “The game of, we only see them on vacation. We only see them throughout the year.” She later added, “We definitely want to keep the format of only seeing them when they’re together, only seeing them over four occasions.”
This story will be updated.
