Within the wake of its cancellation, Thomas retreated to the corners of the web the place Occasion Down followers had largely congregated. “I might go onto YouTube and see clips of Occasion Down within the feedback and really feel the love for the present,” he says. “And I might really feel that choosing up yearly.” Although a film undertaking was floated early on, Enbom couldn’t decide a option to translate the episodic nature of the collection; nonetheless, the producers saved pestering Starz to discover a resolution. “Each couple years we might examine in with them: ‘You need to make extra episodes? Can we make them elsewhere?’” Enbom says. “And the reply was all the time ‘No.’”
Then, a regime change. In 2019, Starz named Jeffrey Hirsch president and chief government, only a couple months earlier than the producers and solid would reconvene at Vulture Pageant for a retrospective panel. “That was integral on this entire course of,” Starr says. “I bear in mind we have been like, ‘OK, let’s get collectively and present them we love one another to see if we are able to get the help once more.’” After years of viewers discovering the present on Hulu, and solid members addressing reunion rumors in each interview they gave, Thomas ultimately pitched Hirsch a brand new season at lunch. With out a lot convincing, “issues occurred fairly rapidly,” he says, and Enbom began writing.
Although Enbom had initially centered the brand new season round Henry and Casey’s (Caplan) on-and-off relationship, he pivoted when Caplan couldn’t work round her taking pictures schedule. As an alternative, Season 3 provides just a few totally different characters—specifically, Evie (Jennifer Garner), as Henry’s new love curiosity, together with Saxon (Tyler Jackson Williams), a viral on-line video star, and Lucy (Zoë Chao), an experimental chef bored with heating up pigs in a blanket. Greater than a dozen years later, the present’s price range has a minimum of expanded the varieties of meals it passes round. “We have been all the time taken with and enthusiastic about truly bringing in new caterers, as a result of that’s the rhythm of catering,” Enbom says. “The youthful technology [has] totally different takes on what this entire arc of success truly means in a brand new panorama.”
Enbom additionally discovered artistic methods to reestablish his now mid-life group’s rapport, incorporating some useful throughlines—and the identical philosophical quandaries—inside a contemporary world. How did Ron handle by the pandemic? Are there any penalties for Kyle’s Nazi-esque wedding ceremony music? Is TikTok the brand new option to construct a model once you’re caught plating fruit? The solutions keep away from a few of the earlier run’s thornier, outdated jokes even because the solid’s predictably goofy eventualities push the envelope. “There’s some stuff in Season 1 and Season 2 that we would not do at this time—we’re all a bit of smarter and a bit of higher,” Hansen says. “But it surely nonetheless has that edginess.”
At this level, reprising outdated reveals and rebooting traditional films has turn out to be a part of the pop cultural material—however that doesn’t imply it isn’t dangerous. Scott, who additionally serves as a producer, understands the inclination to be cautious of resuscitating and probably ruining “good little issues” from the previous, however he by no means hesitated when Starz gave everybody the inexperienced gentle. “Folks really feel near it and really feel possession over it. Which is a part of the specialness of it,” Scott says. “It is very nice as a result of [originally] we did not assume anybody would ever see it and did not care.”
However individuals do care, and Starz is betting on its return, selling new subscriptions with Occasion Down imagery and clips whereas executives chart the numbers and ponder a possible fourth season. It’s fairly a 180 from the pitch rejections Thomas skilled 20 years earlier—and a becoming lesson for the characters themselves. In the event you wait lengthy sufficient, and don’t hand over, you would possibly discover a model of success you by no means imagined. “That is the humorous and miserable a part of chasing your desires,” Hansen says. “I feel that is what resonates.”
