The second season of Mindhunter once again confirmed the dense crime thriller’s status as the most compelling and intriguing television show on air.
But with the first season having covered the years between 1977 and 1980, when criminal psychology and criminal profiling was being set up at the FBI, and the second season detailing the Atlanta child murders between 1980 and 1981, viewers aren’t just wondering will there be a third season of Mindhunter on Netflix but also how many seasons of Mindhunter are actually left.
We actually have a conclusive answer to those questions, too, because creator and showrunner Joe Penhall and director David Fincher don’t just have plans to do a third season of Mindhunter, they also want do a fourth before ending the show on a fifth season.
Holt McCallany, who stars as special agent Bill Tench in Mindhunter, recently made this revelation to The Hollywood Reporter, recalling how Fincher previously said to him, “‘Listen, are you ready to do this for five seasons? Because even if I f*** it up, it’s gonna go five seasons, and I don’t intend to f*** it up.’ So I’d like to think that we will continue, for as long as David is intrigued by telling this particular story.”
McCallany even told Esquire that he has read a “five season bible” for Mindhunter. Penhall actually opened up about the contents of this bible to Metro back in January, revealing the “trajectory” for the show.
Penhall admitted that they want to replicate what about happened to John Douglas, the real life inspiration for Jonathan Groff’s Holden Ford, explaining, “These guys become increasingly successful and the caliber of the interviewees becomes increasingly illustrious and famous. The idea, if we ever get to season 5, is that by season 5 he’s not a behavioral profile anymore he writes successful books and consults on Hollywood films. A bit like John Douglas, you know the original behavioral profile list. So the idea is for it to get weird.”
“John gains more and more notoriety and with that comes problems. I mean you see that emerging at the end of season 1, their own narcissism, their own self-absorption, their own need for attention and fame starts to accrue in the way that criminals and psychopaths need attention and fame.”
There’s still an awful lot left for Mindhunter to explore, especially because several of its episodes have teased the crimes of BTK killer Dennis Lynn Rader, who killed ten people in and around Wichita, Kansas, between 1974 and 1991, but wasn’t actually captured until 2005.
It also helps that critics continue to be impressed by Mindhunter, as its second season scored 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, just beating its original outing by 1%.
Netflix usually announce their renewals one or two months after the release of a new season. So considering that the second season of Mindhunter premiered on Netflix on August 16, we should be getting an update very, very soon.
