Nobody Wants This Season 3 Drops In October, & It’s All About The “After” Phase
Joanne and Noah are playing house. Esther is finding out that wanting a break from your marriage doesn’t mean you’re ready for what’s next.
We’re all familiar with the rom-com grand gestures: sprinting through an airport, kissing in the rain, the big “I choose you” speech. In movies, that’s often the crescendo. The credits roll soon after on a happy couple, and we’re left to assume the rest of their life is smooth sailing. But part of what has made the Netflix series Nobody Wants This a hit for so many viewers is that it explores what happens *between* the swoony stuff. And now, moving into Season 3, we’re heading into uncharted territory for Joanne (Kristen Bell) and Noah (Adam Brody): the “after.”
We’re going to see what happens now that these two crazy kids have decided, once and for all, that they’re in it for real. They’re not the only ones in an after phase, either. Esther and Morgan are both on the other side of relationships, trying to figure out what comes next.
In other words, we’ve entered the sometimes messy, extremely relatable middle. Here’s everything we know so far about Season 3, including the just-revealed fall release date.
When does Nobody Wants This Season 3 hit Netflix?
Add the S3 release date to the many reasons you’re already counting down the days until the official start of fall and the return of cozy binge-watching season. On Thursday, Oct. 22 (nearly a year to the day after Season 2 dropped), Netflix will be gifting us all 10 episodes of Nobody Wants This’ third season. Better go ahead and clear your cal that weekend!
Is there a Season 3 trailer?
Not yet, but the streamer did deliver the next best thing: a batch of first-look photos. We see Joanne and Noah mid-move-in (!!) and apparently very much in their honeymoon phase. We get Sasha sporting… bleached hair? (Um, maybe a post-breakup glow-up? Cry for help? Both?!) Sarah Silverman stands at the front of a classroom in one photo, and another shows Noah’s mom, Bina, perched on Sasha and Esther’s bed. They’re both in the room, too, and I can’t wait to see what the hell that all means.
Who’s in the cast this season?
Happily, all the major players are back: Bell (Joanne), Brody (Noah), Timothy Simons (Sasha), Justine Lupe (Morgan), Jackie Tohn (Esther), Tovah Feldshuh (Bina), Paul Ben-Victor (Ilan), Stephanie Faracy (Lynn), Michael Hitchcock (Henry), Shiloh Bearman (Miriam), and Sherry Cola (Ashley).
Much like we did last season with Brody’s real-life wife Leighton Meester, we’ll get some fresh faces, too:
- Silverman will step in as Joanne’s conversion journey rabbi
- Andrew Rannells (Girls) plays Sebastien, Joanne’s classroom rival
- Keyla Monterroso Mejia (The Studio) plays another classmate, Amber
- Avan Jogia (56 Days) is Travis, a self-assured guy who loves getting a rise out of Joanne
- Poorna Jagannathan (Never Have I Ever) plays Sebastien’s razor-tongued aunt Eleanor
- Sadie Sandler (Roommates) plays Denise, who does a psychic reading for Morgan
- Stephanie Koenig (English Teacher) plays dating-app veteran Poppy, who shoots her shot with Sasha
- Steven Weber (Wings) plays funny, grounded single dad Julian
- Creator Erin Foster makes her on-screen debut as a woman named Nicole
Do we know what Season 3 is about?
We know the broad strokes.
Joanne and Noah finally seem genuinely happy and leaning hard into all the “firsts” of sharing a home (and life). And if you’re afraid this is one of those “waiting for the other shoe to drop” situations, you can probably exhale a little. According to co-showrunner Bruce Eric Kaplan, the writers felt the couple deserved room to settle in and enjoy themselves after last season's turbulence.
But you know there’s got to be drama, and it looks like it will come from the other couples… or ex-couples, I should say. In the Season 2 finale, we saw Esther and Sasha’s marriage come undone, with her telling him she needed to work on herself. Without him. However, it looks like she’ll discover in Season 3 that the person who asks for the split sometimes has a harder time being single. That’s a throughline that Foster said in a Netflix announcement that the writers really wanted to sink their teeth into. So, Esther is the one who leaves but also seems to flounder when faced with the reality of singledom.
Meanwhile, Sasha appears to be finding a way forward. The question so many viewers obviously have is: Will that way forward involve Morgan? These two have shared an odd-couple friendship since Season 1, but there’s certainly been tiptoeing around flirtation. Now, with Morgan having called off her engagement to Dr. Andy (THANK GAWD), and Sasha on the outs with Esther, will these two stay on the buddy-comedy path or veer into something else?
So, what comes “after” for our favorite characters? True to real life, it sounds like it’s going to come with plenty of highs and lows. After all, happy couples on TV don’t stay drama-free for 10 episodes. Nobody, as it were, wants that.
