Modern Love Season 3 - What We Know So Far

More than a year after making its Amazon debut, "Modern Love" returned with Season 2 in mid-August. "Modern Love" is adapted from the 17-year-old New York Times column of the same name and developed for the screen by "Sing Street" and "Once" director John Carney. The general gist of the "Modern Love" column, as it exists in its NYT form, is to share singular stories each week about love, no matter what form that love takes (it's not always romantic!). Amazon's "Modern Love" television anthology adapted this format by bringing eight separate and contained stories to assemble its first season. The result was an anthology series which was as heartwarming as it was heartbreaking, revealing to viewers new and unique love stories that felt unlike anything seen before in the romantic drama genre.

Season 2 of the anthology series served up eight new stories the straddled the Atlantic Ocean, with a majority taking place in the U.S. and a few heartstring-tugging entries set in the Ireland and the UK. These stories told in Season 2 were ones about romantic love and platonic love, the love shared between friends and the love shared between new couples, young love and old love, the pain of love lost and the pain of a love that's still being figured out, the power of rekindled romance, and even the unique sadness of an opportunity to love that is missed. A starry cast was rounded up, as was a formidable group of episode directors for the season, including Carney ("Sing Street"), Jesse Peretz ("Girls"), Sharon Horgan ("Catastrophe"), Emmy Rossum ("Shameless"), and Andrew Rannells ("Big Mouth").

With another great season on the books, here's what we know so far about "Modern Love" Season 3, including the release date, cast, and plot.

With no official renewal confirmed, it's unclear when "Modern Love" Season 3 will premiere on Amazon Prime Video. If Amazon chooses to renew the heartwarming anthology series for another season, fans may have to wait at least a year before they can watch. This is due in large part on what we know about the production process, including filming, on Seasons 1 and 2.

To briefly trace the production timeline here, the first season of "Modern Love" was officially ordered by Amazon in June 2018 (via Deadline). From here, we know Season 1 landed on Amazon in mid-October 2019, which means filming on the series likely took place earlier in 2019. This same year-plus production held true for Season 2. Per The Hollywood Reporter, "Modern Love" was renewed for Season 2 just one week after the Season 1 premiere in October 2019. Although Season 2 filmed while, like numerous other productions, dealing with COVID-19 safety precautions, we know that filming did occur in fall 2020 both in the U.S. and in Ireland. Filming for the second season was documented in respective reports from Albany, New York news outlet The Times Union and Irish outlet Evoke. Season 2 eventually premiered in mid-August 2021.

With this production timeline in hand, if Amazon chooses to renew "Modern Love" for Season 3, then filming would likely kick off in spring or summer 2022 and a premiere date could be set for late 2022 or spring 2023.

The cast of "Modern Love" Season 3 has not been announced because that is entirely dependent on whether or not Amazon will renew the anthology for another season. If a season renewal happens by fall 2021, then casting for a third season will likely take place at the end of 2021 or in the first months of 2022. We also know that this anthology series can attract stars big and small, established and rising, based on the pedigree of actors assembled for the past two seasons.

The Season 2 cast is a perfect example of the great results that can come from casting a variety of actors at varying levels of visibility but who are all equally capable of telling warm, compelling stories. "Modern Love" Season 2 boasted a number of big names throughout its eight installments, including: Minnie Driver ("Will & Grace"), Kit Harington ("Game of Thrones"), Anna Paquin ("True Blood"), Garrett Hedlund ("Tron: Legacy"), Miranda Richardson ("Good Omens"), Tobias Menzies ("The Crown"), Sophie Okonedo ("Ratched"), Jack Reynor ("Midsommar"), and  Lucy Boynton ("Bohemian Rhapsody").

The Season 2 cast also featured noteworthy performances from a strong roster of up-and-coming stars, including Zoe Chao ("Love Life"), Gbenga Akinnagbe ("The Deuce"), Dominique Fishback ("Judas and the Black Messiah"), Isaac Powell ("Dear Evan Hansen"), Lulu Wilson ("The Haunting of Hill House"), and Marquis Rodriguez ("When They See Us"). 

The plot of "Modern Love" Season 3 is still unknown thanks to Amazon taking its sweet time deciding whether to renew the show. However, there are still plenty of stories from The New York Times' "Modern Love" series to adapt considering the actual column debuted in 2004, thus providing plenty of material to work with.

In Season 2, we took another winding tour through the spectrum of love. Here's an overview of each plot line in Season 2: Episode 1 sees a middle-aged doctor grappling with selling the car driven by her late husband following his death some years earlier; Episode 2 follows a young couple whose dating life is upended because the woman is living with a medical condition that causes her to live a nocturnal life; Episode 3 takes place in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic and sees two Irish singles have a magical meeting on a train, leading them to make a pact to meet in two weeks time to see if the connection was genuine; Episode 4 follows two childhood friends who blur the line between friendship and romance after a messy one-night stand; Episode 5 tells the story of a middle-school girl who is struggling to figure out her sexual identity while fostering a crush on a girl at school; Episode 6 follows a man and a woman who are connected by the revelation their spouses were cheating on them with one another, leading to an unsteady romance between the newly-divorced singles; Episode 7 follows two gay men whose blind date doesn't go according to plan and they end up retracing the events of the night after a chance meeting; and Episode 8 sees a long-divorced couple rekindle their passion by beginning a casual romance.