Mindhunter Director Teases Abandoned Plans for Season 3

Mindhunter is one of many Netflix projects that was cancelled to the disappointment of audiences, with details of what was planned for Season 3 possibly adding more disappointment to the unfortunate ending. Director on Season 2 of the series Andrew Dominik recently detailed to Collider that the beloved FBI agents would have headed to Los Angeles to serve as consultants with acclaimed, real-life directors in order to mirror the actual experiences of these agents. Sadly, series creator David Fincher has regularly noted that the cost and time required to bring each season to life makes a third season seem entirely unlikely in any capacity.

“What they were going to do with Season 3 was they were going to go [to] Hollywood,” Dominik explained to the outlet. “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.”

Mann directed the first adaptation of a Hannibal Lecter novel with Manhunter while Demme delivered the acclaimed The Silence of the Lambs, featuring Anthony Hopkins’ debut of the notorious cannibal. The timeline of the development of those films likely means they wouldn’t have directly been incorporated into the events of Season 3, though it surely would have planted the seeds for the eventual adaptations of the character.

These wouldn’t have been the only plans for Season 3, as the first two seasons already included hints of the infamous Dennis Rader, also known as the BTK Killer. Audiences who were aware of the murderer would have easily identified those sequences and understood their relevance, though the series itself never actually addressed the character’s fate. 

Fincher previously explained how he had hoped Mindhunter would have explored these agents all the way up through the 2000s.

“At some point, I’d love to revisit it,” Fincher admitted to Variety back in 2020. “The hope was to get all the way up to the late ’90s, early 2000s, hopefully get all the way up to people knocking on the door at Dennis Rader’s house.” 

Stay tuned for details on the possible future of Mindhunter.

Are you disappointed we won’t get to see a Season 3 of the series anytime soon? Let us know in the comments below or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things Star Wars and horror!