When Will ‘The Great’ Season 2 Premiere on Hulu?

Huzzah! Every episode of The Great Season 1, Elle Fanning‘s delightful new Catherine the Great drama, is streaming on Hulu today. Follow Catherine as she arrives in Russia to marry Peter III (Nicholas Hoult) only to quickly realize that she would be a better monarch than her insipid husband. Season 1 of The Great traces Catherine’s first attempted coup, but leaves on something of a cliffhanger. So when will The Great Season 2 premiere on Hulu?

Created by The Favourite screenwriter Tony McNamara, The Great looks at Catherine the Great’s rise to power through a flirty and feminist lens. Chucking historic detail aside, The Great manages to dramatize Catherine’s early days in the Russian court in such a way that modern audiences can understand the heady, dangerous, and sexy nature of the monarch’s early days.

Elle Fanning plays the young Catherine, a clever and optimistic young woman who finds herself heartbroken when she realizes that her new husband is a cruel and venal creature. It’s only at the urging of her maid Marial (Phoebe Fox) that she realizes that the real love in her life is now Russia. Determined to wrest control of the nation away from her idiotic husband, Catherine launches herself onto a dangerous path, courting allies and setting up schemes to take over the nation in a coup.

The Great Season 1 ends with Peter III discovering Catherine’s plot to overthrow him, but he spares her life upon learning that she is pregnant. So what happens next? Will Catherine ever take the crown? Will we meet the Orlov family? (No, Sacha Dhawan’s Orlo is not a stand in for Grigory Orlov or any of his brothers.) Will Hulu make The Great Season 2, and when will The Great Season 2 premiere on Hulu?

Here’s everything we know about The Great Season 2…

WILL HULU MAKE THE GREAT SEASON 2?

Hulu announced on July 2, 2020 that they would be making a second season of The Great! Huzzah! Season 2 will have 10 episodes, just like the first season.

Even better news? Earlier this year Decider learned that The Great‘s producers are up for doing way more seasons. In fact, The Great executive producer Marian Macgowan told Decider at Winter TCA that “We initially pitched six seasons. So we believe there’s sufficient material to take us through until she is an old woman.”

If that’s true, The Great could very well wind up being Hulu’s answer to Netflix’s The Crown!

WHAT WILL THE GREAT SEASON 2 BE ABOUT?

While both Marian Macgowan and Tony McNamara told Decider that they couldn’t spill too much about what they had planned for future seasons of The Great — as those would be spoilers — they did tease some tantalizing tidbits.

Macgowan told Decider that they would like to explore the class divide in Russia more in Season 2. “I think if Season 2, if we were to be so lucky, we would certainly explore that more. Because she would become more active, and therefore, it would be more relevant,” she said.

McNamara said they had “roughly” planned to introduce key historic figures in Catherine’s life, like the Orlov family. Although the show plays fast and loose with facts in Catherine’s life, the overall trajectory seems to suggest that they might keep with the real storyline where Catherine successfully overthrows Peter III after becoming a mother. A key part of her success rested in the efforts of her lover, Grigory Orlov, and his family, who were powerful within the military.

WHEN WILL THE GREAT SEASON 2 PREMIERE ON HULU?

If Hulu does move forward with The Great Season 2, it will likely take slightly over a year between the start of production and its eventual premiere date. That’s going off the timeline for the first season, which was officially ordered in February 2019, and took 15 months to hit Hulu.

With that in mind, the earliest we can expect The Great Season 2 would be Fall 2021, and that’s assuming that everything sticks to a normal schedule.

Watch The Great on Hulu