A Beloved Apple TV Series Just Got Good News Ahead of Season 3 Premiere
The number of seasons of Apple TV's dramedy series Shrinking keeps growing. On Thursday, a day before the premiere of Shrinking's third season, Apple announced that the show had already been renewed for a fourth season—a strong indication of Apple's faith in the show and its popularity with viewing audiences.
Shrinking, which premiered in 2023, stars Jason Segel as a therapist who decides to go rogue following a personal loss and begins telling his clients what he actually thinks of them. Harrison Ford co-stars, as do Christa Miller, Jessica Williams, Luke Tennie, Michael Urie, Lukita Maxwell, and Ted McGinley. All of the main cast returns for the fourth season, the release date of which has yet to be revealed and production has seemingly not yet begun.
Apple announced the news of the early renewal in a press release on January 27.
Season 3 of Shrinking, which sees the return of guest stars Brett Goldstein, Damon Wayans Jr., Wendie Malick and Cobie Smulders, plus Jeff Daniels and Michael J. Fox joining the cast, begins its 11-episode run on Wednesday, January 28. New episodes hit the streaming service on each Wednesday after that.
Early Renewals Like This Are Relatively Rare
Typically a show will get renewed for a new season once the network or streaming behind it sees how popular the latest season is. If an expensive sophomore season of a show is drawing in significantly fewer viewers than the first season is, that might be a good reason not to commit to making a third season.
If the network or streamer behind the show is confident in a show (and perhaps if they have big-name stars like Ford they want to lock down as soon as possible, depending on how the contracts are looking) they will sometimes gamble and order a season before the newest batch of episodes have even started airing. Apple recently did this with another star-studded series, The Morning Show, which got renewed in September for a fifth season a day before the fourth season premiere.
It helps that Shrinking is critically acclaimed and boasts plenty of Emmy nominations. The upcoming third season has been seen by certain critics, and reviews are almost universally positive, which likely supports Apple's decision to renew the show on the early side.