Where the Feck is ‘Derry Girls’ Season 3 on Netflix?

UPDATE: On August 31, 2022, Netflix announced that Derry Girls Season 3 would premiere (outside Ireland and the UK) on October 7, 2022.

For months now, I have kept constant vigil over my Netflix account. Every few days, I log on, search for Derry Girls, and then despair when I see there are only two seasons of the internationally beloved comedy available in America.

Derry Girls Season 3 has already premiered and concluded in Ireland, the UK, and other parts of the world. It’s been months since foreign fans (and Americans with a VPN) have watched the series finale of Lisa McGee‘s brilliant coming-of-age comedy. For months, I’ve had to dodge spoiler-filled clips on my YouTube homepage and ecstatic tweets about the new season from my UK-based friends. It has been torture combing through the New on Netflix list every month, searching for news about Derry Girls Season 3, and finding nothing.

All I want to know is where the hell Derry Girls Season 3 is, Netflix! It’s 2022! I shouldn’t have to wait this long for a foreign title to drop! Cut the check and give me my show!!!!

Derry Girls is set in Northern Ireland during the 1990s and follows four teen girls (and one wee English fella) as they constantly find themselves in trouble. There’s Erin (Saoirse-Monica Jackson), the group’s hilarious craven, stupidly ambitious ringleader, Erin’s daffy cousin Orla (Louisa Harland), a sweet, strange, space cadet, Michelle (Jamie-Lee O’Donnell) a mouthy, horny, risk-taker, Clare (Nicola Coughlan), an eternally tightly-wound worry wort, and finally James (Dylan Llewellyn), Michelle’s London-raised cousin who has been dropped in Derry by his negligent mother. The gang’s most consistently critical, but maternal, figure is Sister Michael (Siobhan McSweeney), a stern nun from their Catholic school.

Derry Girls is essentially a perfect show. The dialogue is absolutely hilarious, the performances triumphant, and the storytelling balances ridiculous sitcom capers with real heart. But what really makes Derry Girls so special is how the show takes a setting fraught with tragedy to show the persistence of joy. Northern Ireland was pulling itself out of the long-simmering “Troubles” in the ’90s. The girls (and James) routinely have their school buses checked by heavily armed British soldiers. Bombings reroute traffic on the regular. It’s a tense situation! And yet, Derry Girls never wallows in misery. It explodes with humor.

So you can understand why I’ve been dying to watch the conclusion of the series. Re-watches are good and all, but I want to know what happens to Erin and Orla and Michelle and Clare and James now! These episodes are done. They exist. They have been transmitted out to other parts of the world. I’m flummoxed over why it’s taken American Netflix so long to just announce a drop date.

It used to be that licensing deals delayed British, Irish, and foreign projects from premiering the USA for upwards of a year. The thing is we know that Netflix can — and has — gotten around this red tape. New episodes of The Great British Baking Show drop on Netflix days after their UK linear premiere. So it is entirely possible to speed this process up.

Which means again, I ask: WHERE THE HECK IS DERRY GIRLS SEASON 3, NETFLIX?

(Ugh, I really need a VPN, don’t I?)