The Other Two Creators Aren't Worried About the HBO Max Purge

HBO Max’s ongoing purge of its original content has made it clear that nothing is certain — even if a show’s renewal has been announced or an entire season has finished production, it could end up floating in the ether based on HBO’s whims. But Season 3 of The Other Two is a survivor (at least for now). Vanity Fair confirmed the comedy will return on May 4.

Sarah Schneider and Chris Kelly, the show’s creators, aren’t too worried about the cancellations that have been taking place at the streamer. “We're just kind of doing our own thing,” Kelly said in an interview with Vanity Fair. “We hear the things about HBO and HBO Max and stuff, but we just sort of keep working and keep making the show. I guess it's sort of a separate thing.”

Instead, the cast and crew are focusing on the positives of bringing the show to HBO. Schneider calls Season 3 the series’s “most ambitious season so far,” which was made possible in part by an HBO budget. Season 2 ended with the Dubeks all hitting their strides — Cary (Drew Tarver) was just cast as the lead in an indie film, Brooke (Heléne Yorke) took on management duties for all her family members, and Pat (Molly Shannon) and Chase (Case Walker) took a much needed vacation to recover from the stresses of their stardom. Oh, and the season’s storyline also ended in March 2020, just before the pandemic arrived to crush all those dreams.

But this upcoming “ambitious” season skips ahead three years to spare us any COVID-era storylines (and account for Walker going from a 16-year-old to a 20-year-old in real life), which also allows the show to place its characters in some bigger and better settings — first-look photos suggest we’ll see Chase continuing his Justin Beiber-esque trajectory, Cary on Broadway, Pat becoming a media mogul, and Brooke in space.

“With the time jump, the family is years into being part of the public eye,” Tarver told Vanity Fair. “I feel like they’ve settled into their fame, or their notoriety, and the issues that they were dealing with have become more commonplace. There’s maybe a deeper layer of, I guess, humiliation and sadness that comes along with that. The show continues to deliver in terms of the characters being humiliated—the ‘other two’ getting humiliated—in a very exciting, funny, new way.”

And at least for now it seems certain that we’ll actually get to see that humiliation play out without the threat of the entire season disappearing.

The Other Two Seasons 1 and 2 are streaming on HBO Max. Season 3 premieres May 4. Join the discussion about the show in our forums.

Brianna Wellen is a TV Reporter at Primetimer who became obsessed with television when her parents let her stay up late to watch E.R.