'3 Body Problem' hasn't been renewed for season 2 yet, but Netflix has plenty more material to draw from — here's what we know
Netflix's "3 Body Problem" premiered in March.
Here's everything we know about a potential second season ahead of its renewal.
Warning: There are some book spoilers and spoilers for season one later in this post.
"3 Body Problem" is Netflix's latest sci-fi epic — and it doesn't seem too far out of the realm of possibility that it'll be picked up for a second season.
The eight-episode series, which premiered on Netflix in March, is an adaptation of Chinese author Liu Cixin's "Remembrance of Earth's Past" series of novels. Both stories start in Cultural Revolution-era China, when astrophysicist Ye Wenjie watches her father, a physics professor, get beaten to death during a struggle session. Shortly after, she makes a pivotal choice that will influence humanity's path for centuries to come.
Helmed by "Game of Thrones" showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, and "True Blood" writer Alexander Woo, the show remixes many of the book's Chinese characters into a global cast anchored in the United Kingdom. As they unravel a series of mysteries, they're forced to confront the threat of a distant alien invasion.
Here's everything that we know about a potential season two of "3 Body Problem."
Has '3 Body Problem' been renewed for season 2?
Not yet. But this is a big-budget series from some of the most high-profile television creators in the world. If it performs even decently well, it's likely to get renewed.
Case in point: the quick renewal of "Avatar: The Last Airbender" for seasons two and three.
When would season 2 of '3 Body Problem' premiere?
It's hard to make a good guess at this point in time. But Woo said at the SXSW Film & TV Festival in March that they had already begun working on a second season.
"For season two, we've got better than a rough idea," Weiss told Collider. "We're much farther along with that plan than rough idea stages."
How many seasons will '3 Body Problem' have?
We won't have a definitive answer for a while. But the show's trio of showrunners told Collider that they'd likely need three or four seasons to adapt all of Liu's trilogy.
"The third book is massive. It's twice as long, I think, as the other two books," Benioff said. "So maybe that's one season, maybe it's two. But, you know, I think we'd need at least three, maybe four seasons to tell the whole story."
Who's in the cast for season 2?
Nothing's confirmed yet. But — spoilers if you haven't finished season one! — there are few people who are likely, or at least have the potential, to appear in season two.
That includes Jess Hong (who plays Jin Cheng), Jovan Adepo (Saul Durand), Eiza González (Auggie Salazar), Liam Cunningham (Wade), Benedict Wong (Clarence Shi), Sea Shimooka (Sophon), Marlo Kelly (Tatiana), and Saamer Usmani (Raj Varma).
I probably wouldn't count Alex Sharp (Will Downing) entirely out either.
What would '3 Body Problem' season 2 be about?
Here's where we'll really get into some spoiler territory, both for the ending of season one of "3 Body Problem" and book spoilers that might also be potential season two spoilers.
At the end of season one, Saul was named a "Wallfacer" by the United Nations. The position gives him essentially unchecked power to devise a secret plan to eliminate the San-Ti threat.
In Liu's books, Saul corresponds roughly to a character named Luo Ji, who's also a Wallfacer. Luo, like Saul, attempts to refuse the position and shirks his responsibilities. However, he later figures out the key to stopping the Trisolaran (as they're referred to in the novels) threat — an answer to the Fermi paradox called the dark forest hypothesis.
The Fermi paradox, as young Ye Wenjie describes early in "3 Body Problem," is an intellectual dilemma: Given the high likelihood of extraterrestrial life, why have we never encountered it? The dark forest hypothesis posits that there are a high number of intelligent species and societies in the universe — but due to limited resources, they're incentivized to destroy each other upon contact. Thus, most civilizations attempt to stay hidden, for fear of bringing about their own annihilation.
Luo Ji manages to effectively prove the dark forest hypothesis and locks the Trisolarans in a stalemate by threatening to broadcast the location of their home planet to the universe.
It seems reasonable to assume that parts of season two would focus on that storyline. However, season one brought in story elements from both the second and third books — so you shouldn't assume that everything will be exactly the same.
"3 Body Problem" is now streaming on Netflix.
Read the original article on Business Insider