Update: This article was published on 12/9 and republished on 12/10.
I’m starting to notice a bit of a trend here, that more and more shows are starting to realize just how fed up viewers are with interminable waits between seasons, so they’re accelerating production on new seasons to be just months later or even while a show is still airing, if it’s renewed early enough. However, for shows with long production times, even that can be a problem, as is the case for Pluribus.
There’s somewhat bad news about the future, second release date of Pluribus, the hit Apple TV series that has taken over for Severance in terms of fan theorizing and weekend discussion in the streaming space. Pluribus was renewed almost immediately after the season 1 premiere on November 7. I imagine that was always the plan, short of the show totally tanking at release, which clearly it did not.
But now we have information on a few fronts, that late last month, the writers room on season 2 was already in motion (it may have started even before renewal, as often happens for confident series). Then, reportedly, according to crew members, the show is meant to start filming in the spring of 2026, which would be just a few months from now. So, what does that mean for a release date:
- Pluribus season 1 started filming in February 2024 and was released in November 2025, which is a year and nine months apart. Very lengthy for filming and post-production in the industry, most of the time. Of note, this was after the 2023 writers and actors strikes.
- If Pluribus season 2 starts filming in let’s say, March 2026, on the early side of spring, 21 months after that would be December 2027. So, even with a filming start date relatively quickly after season 1 here, that would mean the show would return in December 2027, if not early 2028, over two years from now. Even if production time is reduced this time, I don’t imagine it would be much under two years.
Again, most of the issue here is filming and post-production time, not Apple sitting on a renewal, which sometimes happens. This is not the easiest show to film, even if we’re not talking about loads of blockbuster VFX. Reportedly, Pluribus costs $15 million an episode, which would be $135 million for a nine-episode season. Severance season 2 cost supposedly $20 million per episode, and we know how long that gap was between seasons 1 and 2 there.
We just have to hope that production time is cut down for season 2, so we can maybe get this closer to a year and a half. But given the context here, that seems pretty ambitious, and like it’s going to be a typically long wait between seasons of a big show here. We are a long way from five seasons (borderline six, with how long season 5 was) and 64 episodes of Breaking Bad in five years.
Update: While the release date seems interminably far away, a larger question is just how long Pluribus is supposed to run, and there’s no one better to ask than Vince Gilligan, creator and showrunner of the series.
As he’s done in the past, he’s deferred to his star, Rhea Seehorn, as he’s repeatedly said he crafted this show around her specifically (that’s panning out, considering she’s just been nominated for a Golden Globe before season 1 has even ended). He recalls how when asked this question previously about Breaking Bad in season 1, he said two or three seasons. Now, asked the same question, he’s estimating maybe four seasons. Ultimately, he says he wants it to go as long as Rhea Seehorn wants it to go. And actors aren’t really prone to walk away from hit, award-nominated series all that often. Seehorn was famously snubbed at the Emmys after two nominations for Best Supporting Actress, which she did not win. She lost to Julia Garner from Ozark in 2022 and Jennifer Coolidge in The White Lotus in 2023, the last of which I would say was specifically a gut punch.
However, unlike all those Breaking Bad episodes crammed into about five years, if we’re keeping these gaps between seasons like we’re probably about to see, we could be talking about almost a decade before four seasons would be finished, a tall order even for a patient fanbase. Hopefully, they can reduce production time from here.
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