Why Netflix Canceled Mindhunter Season 3

In the world of "Mindhunter," the BTK Killer is still free. Dennis Rader, the man whose presence and crimes lurked around the edges of the show's two-season run, wasn't caught until 2005, and the second season of "Mindhunter" ended with a grim reminder of his continued serial murders. You can't really blame David Fincher for leaving his historical crime series open-ended; the show based on the book of the same name by John E. Douglas and Mark Olshaker is acclaimed by critics and audiences alike and has frequently been cited as one of the best Netflix originals ever made. It's also pretty darn close to flawless — creepy and emotional, rich both visually and thematically, and home to some of the most fine-tuned TV performances in recent memory. So why the hell did it never come back for a third season?

The narrative surrounding the end of "Mindhunter" has (like the show) been a bit of a slow burn, like the streaming TV version of an ambiguous break-up that starts with the idea of taking some time apart. The first inkling that the series about serial killer-hunting FBI profilers wouldn't be coming back soon came in November 2019, when it was reported that the show's third season was on hold until Fincher finished "Mank." By January 2020, TVLine dropped a report that stressed that the series had not been canceled, but was being put on an indefinite hold. "David is focused on directing his first Netflix film 'Mank' and on producing the second season of 'Love, Death and Robots,'" a Netflix representative told the outlet. "He may revisit 'Mindhunter' again in the future, but in the meantime felt it wasn't fair to the actors to hold them from seeking other work while he was exploring new work of his own."

As unorthodox as this arrangement sounded, it made sense at the time. Fincher is one of the most talented directors working today, and Netflix would be smart to keep the door open to future seasons of this stunning and scary crime show. The director has a working relationship with Netflix that goes all the way back to 2013, when he executive produced their first breakout original series, political thriller "House of Cards." In 2020, Fincher also signed a four-year exclusive deal with Netflix that resulted in his most recent films, "Mank" and "The Killer," debuting exclusively on the platform.

Fincher was and still is an in-demand filmmaker, so it wasn't really a surprise that he would be willing to put "Mindhunter" on the back burner for a while. His reported willingness to free the show's actors from their commitment to the series' schedule also came across as a decent gesture, especially with someone as massively famous as Tony and Grammy-winning actor Jonathan Groff (by then of "Glee," "Frozen," and "Hamilton" fame) headlining the show. Putting "Mindhunter" season 3 on ice seemed like a surprisingly rational, win-win solution for the streamer, cast, and crew.

Unfortunately, the show remains frozen to this day, with no sign it'll ever thaw out. By October 2020, Fincher explained that the show was put on (an initially temporary) hold at his request. "It's a 90-hour workweek. It absorbs everything in your life," he explained. "When I got done, I was pretty exhausted, and I said, 'I don't know if I have it in me right now to break season three.'" He confirmed that the show was not pulling in a big enough audience to justify its budget, and implied that he wasn't willing to make a more inexpensive third season. "I honestly don't think we're going to be able to do it for less than I did season two," Fincher told the outlet, recalling that he was told to wait and see how he felt after "Mank" was done.

A month after his sit-down with Vulture, Fincher told Variety that he wasn't sure "if it makes sense" to continue "Mindhunter," again citing its production costs and brutal schedule. "It was an expensive show," he said. "It had a very passionate audience, but we never got the numbers that justified the cost." He also said that season 2, a simmering thriller about the limits and pitfalls of profiling which largely focused on the FBI's struggle to competently work the Atlanta child murders case, was difficult to produce. Fincher reportedly fired its showrunner and canned the existing story bible, resulting in a tiring reworking of large parts of the season. Fincher lived up to his reputation as an exacting and precise perfectionist, moving to Pittsburgh for the production and overseeing even the episodes he didn't direct, according to co-producer Peter Mavromates.

In a 2023 interview for the French magazine Le Journal du Dimanche (per Forbes), Fincher seemingly put the final nail in the "Mindhunter" coffin, explaining that "in the eyes of Netflix, we didn't attract enough of an audience to justify such an investment [for season 3]." Again, the explanation comes down to the show's budget, but this time, Netflix is squarely framed as the decision-maker. The filmmaker went on to praise the streamer for allowing him to make bold projects in the first place, but said, "The day our desires are not the same, we have to be honest about parting ways."

So we would be delusional to still hold out hope for a third season after all of this, right? Right?! Well, maybe not. Before it ended, Fincher mentioned that he could see the show running for five seasons. After it was shelved, he told Variety that he "would love to revisit it," and wanted to bring the narrative up to the mid-aughts — to "hopefully get all the way up to people knocking on the door at Dennis Rader's house." In 2021, Groff told The Hollywood Reporter that he was leaving the show's future up to Fincher, saying, "the minute he says he wants to do another one, I'll be there in a second." As for Netflix? In the 2020 Vulture piece, a rep from the company said simply: "Maybe in five years." The clock is ticking.