Jen and Judy are going on one last twisty adventure. Netflix has renewed Dead to Me, the dark comedy starring Christina ApplegateandLinda Cardellini, for a third and final season, the streaming service announced Monday.
The renewal is part of creator Liz Feldman's new multi-year deal with Netflix, where she'll create and develop original series and other projects for the streaming service.
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“From start to finish, Dead to Me is exactly the show I wanted to make. And it’s been an incredible gift," Feldman said in a statement. "Telling a story sprung from grief and loss has stretched me as an artist and healed me as a human. I’ll be forever indebted to my partners in crime, my friends for life, Christina and Linda, and our brilliantly talented writers, cast and crew. I am beyond grateful to Netflix for supporting Dead to Me from day one, and I’m thrilled to continue our collaboration.”
“Liz Feldman is a comedic force who brings her fresh and distinct point of view to every element of the creative process from inception through writing and producing," said Jane Wiseman, Netflix's Vice President of Comedy Series, in a statement. "We could not be more excited to expand our relationship with Liz and continue to work with her on Dead to Me and future series to come."
Dead to Me pulled off the most impressive telenovela-inspired twist in season 2 when James Marsden, who played the dearly departed Steve Wood in season 1, returned as Steve's "semi-identical" twin brother, Ben Wood. The surprise reveal was not something Feldman had in her back pocket at the start of the series, but was rather a desire to prolong her working relationship with Marsden.
"Truly how it started was we had such a great experience working with James Marsden and he was so great. He’s basically the polar opposite of Steve as a person. He’s just a great human being and wonderful to have on set, and he and I just really hit it off," Feldman told ET in May. "I received the most incredibly lovely e-mail from him at the end of last season after the show had premiered and people seemed to like it. And he wrote me an e-mail joking around, saying, 'Is there any way Steve could survive a traumatic brain injury and drowning?'"
But Dead to Me wouldn't be Dead to Me without some big shockers at the end of season 2, which left a lot of questions unanswered -- from Ben fleeing the scene after a hit and run with Jen and Judy's car to just how much Jen's oldest son knows about what actually happened to Steve (and his mom's role in it).
"I don’t want to say too much just because in terms of what you are left to feel and think and wonder is a really individual experience and I certainly wouldn’t want to color that for anybody," Feldman said of the climactic ending, hinting that Ben may have skeletons in his closet. "But I think with any big finale, there should be an element of like, 'Wait, wait, wait... what?' So we were definitely going for a little bit of 'Wait, wait, wait... what?'"
"We’re dealing with a lot of things throughout the season and we wanted to find a powerful way to show, not tell a completion or a full-circleness to some of those things. And we felt like this was a good way to do it," she explained. "There’s obviously a motif running through the show with cars and with crashes, so that was what led us there. But all stories that we tell on this show, we’re always aiming to subvert your expectations and to surprise you and to delight you. Surprise and delight really color a lot of that. That's what we’re going for. I felt, when this was pitched, it satisfied those things really well. It was really surprising, and there’s an element to it that is really exciting and a little scary and certainly shocking. You always want to leave threads dangling so that you have something to answer in season 3, and also hopefully you’re enticing your network or your streaming platform to keep the story going for another season."
Dead to Me is streaming now on Netflix.
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