Is There Hope For ‘Dead to Me’ Season 4 After Season 3’s Finale Cliffhanger?

Warning: Spoilers for Dead to Me‘s Season 3 finale ahead.

Netflix’s Dead to Me dropped its third (and allegedly final) season on November 17. But since the 10 episodes end on a major cliffhanger, fans can’t help but to wonder if there’s hope for a Season 4 after all.

Led by dynamic duo Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini, the comedy follows mom and widow Jen Harding (Applegate) as she mourns her husband who died in a hit-and-run. Her life veers further off course when she meets the secret-keeping Judy Hale (Cardellini), her man Steve (James Marsden), and eventually his twin brother Ben (also Marsden). The series, which premiered in 2019, shows Jen and Judy getting into an overwhelming number of sticky situations. But in the end, Jen reveals she wouldn’t change anything about her painful, chaotic journey.

On July 6, 2020 — long ahead of Season 3’s release, and shortly after Season 2 premiered in May 2020 — Netflix announced on Twitter that the show was renewed for a third (and final) season.

Showrunner Liz Feldman also explained why she was ready for the show to end with Season 3. “From start to finish, Dead To Me is exactly the show I wanted to make. And it’s been an incredible gift,” Feldman said. “Telling a story sprung from grief and loss has stretched me as an artist and healed me as a human. I’ll be forever indebted to my partners in crime, my friends for life, Christina and Linda, and our brilliantly talented writers, cast and crew. I am beyond grateful to Netflix for supporting Dead To Me from day one, and I’m thrilled to continue our collaboration.”

If you breezed through Season 3’s 10 episodes, you know that Dead to Me‘s finale, aptly titled “We’ve Reached The End,” ends on a MAJOR cliffhanger. So will fans get the chance to see how things play out in a potential Season 4? Or is Season 3 truly the end of Dead to Me? We’ve got the answers below.

Will There Be a Season 4 of Dead to Me on Netflix?

Before the end credits roll on Season 3, Jen turns to Ben and says, “I have to tell you something.” Though the nature of that something is technically unknown, based on everything that went down in the finale (and really all three seasons), we can assume Jen is about to come clean about everything, including Steve’s death. Obviously that conversation, along with Ben’s reaction, is something fans would love to see. So it makes sense that people are wondering if the show will return for Season 4, despite being repeatedly told that Season 3 will be the last.

The answer? Season 3 will still be Dead to Me‘s final season. Showrunner Liz Feldman — along with Applegate and Cardellini — even discussed it in an interview with Variety. “We were halfway through shooting Season 2, and the ending of the show just dropped into my head — this idea that I had about how best to tell the story about grief, loss and friendship in the most full-circle, hopefully satisfying way,” Feldman explained. She said she felt she got to fully tell the story she imagined, and all three women are content with the way the series wraps up. (Well, content and simultaneously sad as hell. As are we all!)

The cast and crew also struggled to film Season 3 amidst COVID and Applegate’s multiple sclerosis diagnosis at the start of production. Earlier this month, Applegate — who revealed her diagnosis in 2021 — admitted she ignored some warning signs of the disease while filming earlier episodes of Dead to Me, and in their recent interview with Variety, she revealed that filming with MS was a struggle, but she always knew she wanted to complete the show.

“The conversation had come up, like, ‘Should we just stop?’ I was like, ‘No, we have to finish this for ourselves. We have to tell our story. And I’ll do whatever I can — I’m just going to need your help,'” Applegate explained. “When I’d say, ‘Hey, you know what? I can’t work today,’ they’d go, ‘OK, we’re gonna not work today,’ or ‘We’ll find other scenes.’ I was profoundly grateful that I could say, ‘I need a half an hour,’ or ‘I need to go lay down — I can’t walk.'”

Factoring in Feldman’s vision and Applegate’s health, there are many reasons why Season 3 will be (and should be) Dead to Me‘s last. Sure, it’d be nice to see that final cliffhanger resolved, but on top of everything, the heart of Dead to Me was always been Jen and Judy’s friendship, and after Judy’s fate was revealed in Season 3 a Season 4 without her just wouldn’t feel right.

All three seasons of Dead to Me are now streaming on Netflix.