‘Transparent’ Previewed Its Third Season in Toronto, Including the Caitlyn Jenner Episode

In the build-up to the third season of Amazon’s Transparent — which debuts on Prime Video on September 23rd — one piece of casting news overshadowed everything else: Caitlyn Jenner, reality TV icon and lightning rod for any number of hot takes, would be guest-starring at some point during the season. Speculation was pretty widespread as to the nature of Jenner’s role on the show, with no small amount of concern about the attention-grabbiness of it all.

Now that the first three episodes of season 3 have premiered at the Toronto Film Festival (as part of their Primetime program, which was added to the festival last year), including Jenner’s appearance in episode 3, everybody can rest easy: Jenner is playing herself during a nitrous-fueled hallucination while Ali (Gaby Hoffmann) is at the dentist. Jenner and feminist author Ntozake Shange (For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf) shared Ali’s dreamspace in an imagined game of Wheel of Fortune. As anyone really should have been able to predict.

As for what else is going on in those first episodes of season 3?

• Maura (Jeffrey Tambor) picks up where she left off last season with Vicki (Anjelica Huston), but she’s feeling unfulfilled. By episode 3, there’s a sleek makeover as well as a decision to move forward in her transition.
• Sarah (Amy Landecker) has settled into a kind of post-divorce cohabitation with Len (Rob Heubel), but her efforts to take a more active role in the temple are being thwarted. Oh, and she’s also essentially using S&M sessions as therapy. Sarah’s doing great.
• Josh (Jay Duplass) is feeling the creeping dread of age as younger versions of himself (including Nathan Fielder as a character who gets called “Josh Jr.”) begin to assert themselves at work. He also starts getting closer to Maura’s trans friend Shea (Trace Lysette).
• Ali is seemingly doing great, teaching classes as a TA and also partaking in a relationship with Leslie (Cherry Jones), though the latter is clearly doomed.
• Shelly (Judith Light) is utterly out of her mind, having decided to write a one-woman show about her experiences, as well as becoming a brand on social media, both of which are going to be called “To Shell and Back.” God bless.
• Rabbi Raquel (Kathryn Hahn) is a main character this season, and when she’s not trying in vain to support Sarah’s candidacy on the temple board or asking about Josh without making it look like she’s asking about Josh (also in vain), she’s sharing scenes with a handsome new cantor who she knows from way back.

The story being told in these three episodes suggests a season of Transparent that wants to be aware of inclusiveness and intersectionality. Consistently in these episodes, Maura and her children come up against their own privilege inside their otherness. Maura is trans, yes, but she’s also white and has money. Watching her encounter other characters who are trans like her but in many other ways unlike her has some awkward and often funny static to it. Sarah keeps asking around for a pat on the back about her bisexuality, and Ali doesn’t want to teach authors of color for fear of saying something un-PC (if you can’t stand the Pfefferman kids, I’m not sure this will be the season that changes), getting side-eye from everyone around them in the process. But it all fits under that Transparent umbrella, where everybody plants a flag at the destination that is acceptance and inclusion, then spends the rest of their time fumbling on  the road to getting there.

Transparent will premiere its third season on Prime Video on September 23rd.

[Watch Transparent on Prime Video]